ya.

i just found out that one of my favorite singers in high school, Soraya, passed away from breast cancer today. i found out through an old friend who i had HUGE drama with in high school but who i now keep in touch with, who saw the news and instantly thought of me.

normally i'm not really obsessed with celebrity, particularly since i haven't followed Soraya's more recent career. but when i heard this news i immediately burst into tears.

in her first album she had a song called "En Esta Noche." it's about the death of her mother, who also died of breast cancer, and it was a song that meant the world to me when i was younger. after the death of my father, and during the beginning of my mother's battle with breast cancer, i would listen to this song, cry, and wonder what it would be like to lose the only parent i had (have) left.

that album was not just an album of Latin Pop Ballads for me. it was the album that meant everything to me when i felt i was losing everything i had. i related to her, somehow. she'd lost a parent. she wondered about her own life. and i got this all through her songs. it helped me. it was therapeutic.

i can't believe Soraya passed away. i can't believe breast cancer claimed her life, as well as her mom's. i can't believe how someone who meant so much to me in those years, and yet who i never met (but did see perform right after her first chemo ended), has been taken by the fate i fear the most. because the second thing i thought when i heard of her death, right after i realized how crushed i was, was the thought that this can happen to me too.