on cancer

Massachusetts, 2014

“I wish I could just—reset time.” Anthony muttered, his gaze fixated—but upon nowhere.

“Hmm,” I looked up at the ceiling, “I’d rather rewind.”

Growing up, I floated in a quiet stream: lived in the same tropical city, had the same friends, and rarely traveled. The stream became a waterfall and pushed me down a cliff when I moved to Massachusetts alone at 15. Everything was foreign—the people, the language, the climate. Even the sound of my own name was foreign: toneless, jumbled, meaningless in my mother tongue.

I asked Anthony, who’d also come from abroad: “Don’t you miss home?”

“Sure,” he sighed, “but I needed a change.”

I thought of Kundera’s novel, Life is Elsewhere. Both of us had run—away from home, convinced that there must be somewhere else where life—the life—would await us. We trod to a new destination, but soon realized it was not perfect, either. Once again, we began dreaming about elsewhere.

California, 2024

In my recollection, the months after the mastectomy were rather blissful. Though I’d lost an organ, I knew that it was to my benefit, and prioritized healing.

However, as I play back the memories, a rage swarms within me: I don’t remember the loss itself. I was unconscious throughout. When I awoke hours later, all I had as proof was an aching wound covered with criss-crossed bandages. I feel tricked: I looked away for one second, and part of me was lost forever.

A week after my mastectomy, I was told the cancer was more advanced, and I’d need another surgery.

Before being put under again, I was taken from pre-op to radiology in a wheelchair for an injection. The nurse said: “Your nipple area might feel a sting.”

In went the shot; “I felt nothing.”

“Did you have a mastectomy?”

“Yea,” I smiled, “I guess not being able to feel anything has its perks too.”

As I allow the anger to settle in, I see that I’d been put under for three whole years. I whipped up my own anesthesia with a blend of radical optimism and twisted humor, and numbed away all the confusion, loneliness, and resentment. I grimace, feeling like an imposter in front of all who had called me “strong.”

If I could rewind time, would I have rather felt the full weight of anguish in its rawest form? Is that what a “strong” person should’ve done?

I recall the occasional nights when I felt my grip on hope loosen. There was no other way: the anesthesia was necessary. Without it, bitterness would have swallowed me whole.

Surviving is an instinct that comes easy. The real test of strength—is the daily will to thrive in the sun with a shadow at my feet.

I thus arrive at a liberating dead end, and stop looking for elsewhere. Life is not elsewhere. Life is here. Here, now, always—