Permission Slip

Immature. Iconic. Classic.

If you grew up when I did, those three words easily describe Blink-182. And if you had told my younger self that Blink-182 would one day help me process cancer survivorship, I would have laughed in your face—because 1) that seemed incredibly unlikely, and 2) surely I’d be quite elderly if/when I got cancer.

They were the band we blasted with the windows down. The band our parents rolled their eyes at while we shouted every word to “All the Small Things.” They were unserious. Loud. Adolescent?

For years, they felt frozen in that era. After lineup changes, side projects, and long stretches of tension between members, they made music together again—but it never quite felt like them. Not fully. Not the way it had when we were kids.

So when I saw a notification that a new music video had just dropped for a song called “One More Time,” I wasn’t expecting much. I clicked anyway.

My body reacted before my brain could.
Within seconds, I knew this wasn’t nostalgia. This wasn’t a wink at the past.

This was something heavier. Something raw.
When Tom started singing, my chest tightened.

It wasn’t the first time they had written about serious topics. But it was my first time hearing a new song from them since both Mark Hoppus and I had been through cancer.

I wasn’t prepared for how personal it would feel.

“I wish they told us, it shouldn’t take a sickness.”

Damn.

“Do I have to die to hear you miss me?”

Damn, again.

“I know that next time ain’t always gonna happen. I gotta say I love you while we’re here.”

Wow.

I pressed replay. Again. And again.

There was something disarming about grown men—men who built careers on toilet humor and teenage angst—singing so openly about mortality, regret, and so much more.

It felt honest in a way I hadn’t been able to articulate in my own life.

I opened the comments section, expecting the usual internet chaos. Instead, I found confession after confession: people sharing about losing parents, surviving illness, regretted fights, estranged siblings, lifelong friendships.

Strangers crying together in a YouTube thread.

I sat at my desk at work, trying not to cry in an office that had no idea what was happening inside my chest.

I felt seen.

That word gets overused. But that’s what it was: recognition. A mirroring.

Survivorship had been lonelier than I expected. During treatment, there are appointments, milestones, language for what’s happening. People show up with meals, texts, and urgency.

After treatment, the world quietly expects you to move on.

But my body hadn’t moved on. My brain hadn’t moved on. My fear certainly hadn’t.

I valued sleep and movement, two things that once felt simple. Now they felt fragile. My symptoms—fatigue, brain fog, uncontrollable body temperatures—made me feel unreliable in my own life. I was frustrated. I was angry. I was tired of pretending I was “back to normal.”

I didn’t want to be positive all the time. I didn’t want to “just be grateful.” I didn’t want to “put it behind me.”

I wanted someone to admit that something fundamental had shifted.

Months later, I went to see Blink-182 in concert. A friend and I kept saying beforehand, “I just want them to play ‘One More Time.’”

They didn’t.

After the show, we looked at each other and laughed. “They didn’t play it—but that was so much fun!”

Under the stadium lights, surrounded by thousands of people screaming lyrics in unison, something happened.

I had energy.

Real energy.

Not forced. Not rationed. Not calculated around a bedtime or a symptom flare.

I didn’t think about my fatigue once.

I didn’t monitor myself.

I just sang.

Watching Mark on stage—bald head now grown back in, older than I remembered, alive—I had a quiet thought: If he can survive cancer and go back on tour at 51, then surely I can figure out how to live my ordinary life at thirty-something.

It wasn’t comparison. It was permission.

After the concert, I picked up his memoir, Fahrenheit-182. I wasn’t sure it would be for me. If I didn’t like it, I could stop reading.

I didn’t stop.

In the book, he shares journal entries from each round of chemo. He writes about finding a lump. About watching doctors’ expressions change mid-conversation. About hair falling out. About brain fog. About the waiting-room thoughts that no one warns you about.

I had something in common with Mark Hoppus.

Logically, I knew I wasn’t the only person my age to get cancer. Statistics prove that.

But reading his words—seeing my internal monologue reflected back at me by the frontman of a band I once associated with immaturity—hit differently.

He often writes that “one in a million happens to me all the time.”

I had always interpreted my diagnosis as proof that statistics were meaningless. That I had simply drawn the short straw. I never considered that being a statistical anomaly could hold any positive charge.

Once, joking about the lottery, I said, “There was a one percent chance I’d get cancer, and that happened, so who knows.”

But I didn’t actually believe luck worked both ways.

His perspective cracked something open. Not toxic positivity. Not silver-lining language. Just the possibility that improbable didn’t always mean tragic.

It’s been two years since that song came out. I still listen to it often.

Just last night, my husband turned it on in the kitchen and said, “I know how much you like this song,” and stepped closer to hug me.

It was sweet. Gentle. Thoughtful.

And I felt completely alone.

The thought flashed before I could stop it: He doesn’t get it.

He was with me every single day during treatment. He sat next to me at my worst. He let me rage, cry, and spiral without trying to fix me. He didn’t rush my grief. He didn’t minimize my fear. He held it with me.

But when the song played, I realized something.

Cancer is in his rearview mirror.

It’s in my backseat.

It’s not in the driver’s seat anymore. It’s not steering every decision. It’s not riding shotgun, gripping the dashboard.

But it’s still in the car.

When the song comes on, it’s a permission slip. Permission to feel the fear that still surfaces at routine scans. Permission to feel anger about a body that doesn’t behave the way it used to. Permission to grieve the version of myself who assumed longevity.

Sometimes what gets us through isn’t a breakthrough in therapy or a perfectly reframed thought. Sometimes it’s a three-minute pop-punk song that tells the truth about how fragile all of this is.

It’s a reminder to say “I love you” while we’re here.

It’s a reminder that complicated friendships can survive.

It’s a reminder that survivorship is not the same thing as being finished.

And maybe most importantly, it’s a reminder that sharing your story—whether in a memoir, a lyric, or a YouTube comment—creates community in places you never expected to find it.

I used to think Blink-182 was just the soundtrack to my adolescence.

Now I know they’re also part of the soundtrack to my survivorship.

And sometimes, that’s enough to carry me home.