When Help Became a Mirror

Velarion Light Journal Entry 4

When I was going through this health crisis, something inside me shattered — not just physically, but emotionally.

I had never asked anyone for help. Not once.

My whole life, I had been the strong one, the dependable one, the one who carried everything quietly.

 So when my body collapsed and I finally reached out… something unexpected happened:

Most people made me feel like I was a burden.

The tone in their voice.
The hesitation.
The subtle annoyance when I needed something.
It was like my pain was an inconvenience.

It stunned me.

I wasn’t asking for favours, or comfort, or attention.

I was asking for survival.

And yet, it was in that devastating moment — where only a few people showed up and the rest revealed themselves — that I saw my life with sharp clarity. It opened my eyes to the ways I had been over-giving, over-caring, over-extending… for people who would never do the same.

But it was also the first time in my life that I advocated for myself.
The first time I said, “Something is wrong. I need this. I deserve care.”

The doctors took nearly two weeks to figure out what was happening.
Two weeks of struggling to breathe.
Two weeks of being told it was anxiety, depression, or acid reflux.
Two weeks of feeling like I was losing oxygen while no one believed me.

By the time I couldn’t walk from one room to another without stopping — leaning on a wall, a doorframe, anything to steady myself — my doctor finally uncovered the truth:

I had edema of the esophagus.
My airway was closing.
My body was swelling inward.
And if I didn’t get the right medication and stay in the hospital…

Death was imminent.

Hearing those words didn’t scare me — they confirmed what my body had been telling me all along. I wasn’t dramatic. I wasn’t anxious. I wasn’t imagining anything. I was dying.

And no one had listened.

But I listened.
And that changed everything.

This was the moment the Advocate in me was born.
The moment I learned that survival sometimes means standing alone.
The moment I realized how sacred and non-negotiable my life truly was.

It was the beginning of my reclaiming —
my voice,
my health,
my boundaries,
my worth.

And as painful as that chapter was…
it was also the first doorway into who I am now.

-Cassia