My Own Worst Enemy

Come and hear Anna read this piece out loud at our upcoming Perkatory event! October 9th, 7:00pm ET

Dear Cancer,

I’ll never forget the day we met. We were introduced haphazardly by the radiologist who read my CT scan results, just minutes after I left my appointment. The MyChart notification caught me off guard, leaving my heart pounding and my body trembling, but my fingers unable to resist clicking that button to view the results. I know the radiologist didn’t intend for us to have such a shocking introduction—she was just doing her job, and very efficiently at that! But her words, which I read alone in my car in a shopping center parking lot, are permanently seared into my mind: “most suggestive of lymphoma.”

When I got home a few minutes later, I stared at myself in the mirror and became sick to my stomach at the sight of you living there in my neck. An alarm was going off in my head like a security system: intruder alert, intruder alert! I cried at what you had done to me, how you had changed me, how unfair it was that I would have to go through chemo at the age of 23. How could you do this to me?

Then the reality of our relationship hit me: you were me. You came from a malfunction in my own hardwiring, one of my cells getting mixed up and mutated and picking up a need to grow and proliferate. My own body had betrayed me and made me sick, and the only way to hurt you was to hurt both of us.

That realization left me feeling shaken and uneasy, but it wasn’t exactly an unfamiliar feeling. You weren’t my first experience with self-betrayal. In fact, I have lived a lot of my life as my own worst enemy. Since childhood, I have devoted a great deal of time and energy to putting myself down and telling myself that I’m not good enough, criticizing every element of my being and drowning in insecurity.

It may not have been a physical malignancy, but it was destructive in so many parts of my life. I stayed silent when I wanted to speak up because I thought my opinions weren’t important or valid. I made choices that didn’t align with my morals because it seemed simpler or more socially acceptable. I let fear get in the way of trying new things and experiencing life to the fullest. There are so many instances that I have betrayed myself and my values, and looking back on those experiences I ask myself the same question I asked you: “How could you do this to me?”

So now I wonder, am I writing to this thing called cancer, or am I writing to myself? When I think about the changes I have experienced because of cancer, they have mostly been changes in my relationship with myself. I have spent a lot of time reflecting on how I’m living my life and what really matters most to me. I have learned to care less about my physical appearance and what other people might think about me, and more about my own interests and passions, and how I can be there for the people I love. Trying new things used to terrify me, but now I find myself able to enter new situations with a sense of curiosity rather than fear. I am also better at living in the present rather than the past or the future because I don’t want to take any precious moment for granted. I feel in control of my life and happier with myself than I ever have before.

It has been three years since we said goodbye, and my doctor feels confident that we will never meet again. It’s a relief to be able to leave you behind, along with a lot of the baggage that had been holding me back. I may never be able to fully say goodbye to my tendency for self-criticism, but because of you, I am working on it. Hopefully one day I will find that I have become my own best friend and biggest supporter, and when I do, I’ll remember what we went through together and what you taught me.