before & after

No one told me that getting cancer would mean I’d become a haunted house.

It’s not the kind of change that happens over time, or even overnight. The minute you’re diagnosed, the life that you knew ends. You will grieve, over and over again, the person you were. You’ll think about how weird it is to know who you were before while also knowing that that person will never know who you are now.

The plans you had get packed away. Your hobbies grow cobwebs. People look at you differently. The questions they ask aren’t accusatory – you know this in your heart – but they feel like they’re trying to assign blame. Does it run in your family? Do you smoke? Were you vaccinated? How did you find it? How did you know?

How do I make sure I don’t end up like you?

Some of that is natural, sure. We try to make sense of nonsensical situations. But it’s a strange thing to talk to old friends and acquaintances, feeling as healthy as you ever have, and realize that you’ve become the embodiment of their biggest fear.

People will comment on how good you look. How good you sound. That you’re still beautiful. They’ll mean it as a complete sentence and a compliment, but your brain will recognize it only as a half-spoken truth and will fill in the rest: You’re still beautiful, even if you look like that.

And you will look like that. Despite what people tell you, you’ll slowly stop recognizing the person you see in the mirror. Your weight will change. Your hair will fall out. Your eyes will sink in a little more. It’ll hit you hardest once you lose your eyebrows. You ‘ll see your reflection and know you’re in there somewhere, but you’ll be too tired to go searching. You’ll say some affirmations (I am beautiful. I am powerful. I am loved.) and hope they stave off the existential crisis long enough for your image to return. And it will. A little.

And then, of course, there are the ghosts. Except they’re your friends and suddenly it won’t feel right to call people ghosts. You’ll make friends with other people who have cancer. You’ll lose them to cancer. You’ll list off their names in the order they died – Chloe, Thomas, Iliana – sometimes when talking to other people and sometimes just when you’re alone and thinking about them. You know the list will inevitably get longer, but it doesn’t stop you from loving your friends any less, and it doesn’t stop you from wanting to make more. You realize that your friends aren’t ghosts in the same way that you realize death is no longer something you fear.

You’ll wonder if that’s what it actually means to be haunted: to experience the worst thing that could’ve happened and keep going. To mourn the person you were, the body you had, the place in life you thought you’d be by now; to be thankful for the person you’ve become even though you’ll never be thankful for the circumstances that brought you to this point. To honor your friends by talking about them after they’re gone. To know that grief and joy and anger and amazement can all coexist.

And, if that is what it means to be haunted, what’s so scary about that?