I have always wondered what it feels like to die. Would it be sudden, like a snap of fingers, or slow, like the fading of an old song? I've thought about it more times than I care to admit, but the thought never really scared me—until now.

My name is MJ. I'm a Grade 12 student in the Philippines, the seventh child in a family of twelve. We are poor, not the kind of poor that people talk about in passing, but the kind that sits heavy in your chest every time you wake up. The kind where hunger is not just a feeling but a reality you learn to live with.

I remember when I was in Grade 1, my mother would give me and my siblings one peso each for allowance—on good days. Most days, there was nothing. Our lunch was even more heartbreaking. A single egg, cooked and divided among six of us, carefully measured to make sure everyone had a fair share. Some people don't believe it when I tell them, as if our poverty is too extreme to be real. But for us, it was just life.

We lived in a small house in the province, where the days were long, and dreams were distant. My father worked endlessly, my mother did everything she could to stretch what little we had, and my siblings and I learned to survive on scraps of hope.

But life, as I came to realize, doesn't wait for you to catch your breath. One day, I found out I had a disease—a contagious, life-threatening disease. Suddenly, death wasn't just a thought anymore; it was a possibility, a shadow that followed me everywhere I went.

This is my story—the story of survival, of pain, of loss, and perhaps, of hope.