I never really liked kids. I am the youngest of three and I never had to put up with little siblings or babysitting, so maybe the lack of exposure to children made me dislike them when I did experience these rare interactions. In stores, there was always a child screaming if they did not get their way; or a fussy toddler making a scene in a restaurant; and those experiences pushed me away from kids. When I was forced to be near children, it was at family events where spoiled cousins were rude and obnoxious. Cute children appeared in videos on the internet and even then, I did not want one because I knew they had an ugly side. When adults asked me if I wanted kids, I would scrunch my nose and shake my head. 

But as I grew, I questioned the complexity of these choices and opportunities. Just because children have an ugly side, does that make them ugly in turn? 

I realized the beauty of children when I was admitted to Wayne Memorial Hospital at the end of my sophomore year of high school. As I was sentenced to a plethora of tests, I made my medical diagnosis in the hospital bathroom with the help of Dr. Google: I had ovarian cancer. And I mourned the life I would never have. The girl who swore up and down she would never have a child was mourning a family she would never have. The children playing on the front lawn, their rainboots and sneakers by the door, their handprints on sliding doors, and crayon drawings on the fridge. An entire life, millions of opportunities and experiences, gone in an instant. But I never really wanted it, right? 

In that hospital bathroom, I knew that life was taken from me, the opportunity to experience that life was gone, and I did not have a choice anymore. I did not want kids, but I wanted the chance to have them, and only at the lack of this opportunity did I realize the importance of these choices.

My close-mindedness blinded me to the choices I took for granted my whole life. I overlooked and ignored many chances and opportunities, limiting my potential. I flooded opportunities presented to me with negatives and lacked the perspective to see the positives. I had never wanted to have a baby, I did not want to clean up their messes, put up with screaming matches, or give up years of sleep over a crying child. Yet, here I was crying on the bathroom floor as this life was ripped from me, the chance to lose sleep over a restless baby, the chance to hear their laugh, or see their first steps. 

Sure, children can be ugly, loud and gross, but that does not define them. The ugly—and possible negatives—of an opportunity should not be their definition. There could be beauty in these opportunities and choices before us, but they have to be realized, or all we see are these ugly possibilities. 

I learned a lot of things in that hospital bathroom. One of them was to not trust Dr. Google, because I had appendicitis, a very treatable medical issue. I learned that every opportunity available to me is important and these experiences are what you make them. 

Now do not get me wrong, not every choice we are tasked with making is going to be easy to swallow; nor is it easy to learn from these experiences. But we must look toward these positives, to see the glass in front of us as half full and not half empty. 

These experiences, however terrible or ugly they were, happened in a world where any number of things could have gone wrong, and the opportunity to choose these things, however minuscule or world-changing, is a blessing.

Elizabeth Reeves is a student at Sullivan West studying a variety of courses. She plans to study aviation and flight operations at an accredited university.