before & after

No one told me that getting cancer would turn me into a haunted house.

It’s not the kind of change that happens over time, or even overnight. The life that you’ve known ends the minute you’re diagnosed. In fact, it feels like everything you’ve known changes in that instant. In time, you’ll begin to grieve – over and over again – the person you were. Sometimes, you’ll find yourself overwhelmed by the realization that the person you were before will never know who you’ve become. She had no idea what was coming and you couldn’t keep her safe.

The plans you had get packed away. Your hobbies grow cobwebs. People look at you differently. They speak to you differently. The questions they ask aren’t accusatory – you know this in your heart – but they feel a bit like throwing darts at the wall. Does it run in your family? Do you smoke? What did you eat? What did you drink? How did you find it? How did you know?

The words may change, but the essence of the question remains the same: 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 be talking to old friends and acquaintances, feeling as healthy as you ever have, and realizing mid-conversation that you’re the embodiment of their biggest fear.

Your body stops being solely your own. You’re poked and prodded and bruised and scarred: blood tests and ultrasounds and CT, MRI, and bone density scans; egg retrieval and port placement and chemo and surgeries and radiation. “I’ll step out while you change” starts to feel less like a courtesy and more like a waste of time. You stuff your clothing into cubbies and lay in rooms half-naked. You watch nurses gown up to protect themselves from the literal poison they’re injecting into a vein that happens to connect straight to your heart; you watch the radiation techs leave the room to protect themselves before turning on the machine. You lose the parts of your body you loved the most and the parts you hadn’t thought much about (because who realizes they’re going to lose their bellybutton as a result of breast cancer?!).

People will comment on how good you look. How good you sound (this one you’ll hate the most). That you’re still beautiful. They’ll say it as a complete sentence and intend for it to land as a compliment, but your brain will recognize it only as a half-spoken truth. It will take the liberty of filling 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 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, too focused on just getting through the day to attempt an excavation. 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 a more familiar reflection to return. And they will. A little.

But haunted houses have ghosts. And yes, you’ve made friends with other people who have cancer; and yes, you’ve lost some of them; but it won’t feel right to call them ghosts. The people around you who’ve never had cancer, who’ve never lost three friends in eight months from the same fucking disease won’t know how to support you. They won’t know that all you want is to be able to talk about your friends – to tell them about Chloe and Thomas and Iliana. You know that part of the deal you never made is that the list of names will inevitably get longer, but you also know that this doesn’t stop you from loving your friends any less. It doesn’t stop you from wanting to get to know more people who may leave you (or people who you may leave). You realize that your friends aren’t ghosts in the same way that you realize that, despite having believed the opposite for your entire life, 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 view death as a reunion rather than something to fear. To allow grief and joy and anger and confusion and amazement and love to coexist.

And if that’s what it means to be haunted, what exactly is there to be afraid of?