The Stairwell

You never can make sense of the whole picture until you remember the trepidation you felt at nine years old when you went back to school, fresh out of the children’s hospital. Not only were you a little girl with barely-there hair and a chemo-induced puffy face, but you were still relearning how to go down the stairs and worried other kids would think you’re slow for not being able to put one foot in front of the other.

It is one of those strangely vivid moments that maintain surprising clarity as the years pass. We are lined up to go to lunch and I am right smack in the middle, surrounded by kids chatting excitedly. Their rapid steps look the way people’s feet do when they’re running quick feet drills through an agility ladder. The railing is visibly lumpy from the number of times it has been painted over with thick, uneven globs, but it seems hardly any of them feel the need to use it. This was the moment that had been in the forefront of my mind since I woke up that morning. Not my new classmates, not the return to public education, not even if I would like my new teacher. Just the stairs. Hyperaware of the person behind me, a split second of hesitation passes before I launch myself down the steps. It’s a bit awkward and clumsy—the stairs are less steep than the ones at home—and I’m probably lifting my knees higher than I need to be, but I do it without stumbling. It’s comical the adrenaline rush I got from it.

The next decade will follow suit. A creeping premonition of the ground to make up, consciousness of the ever-spinning world that people will say stops for no one, leading me to propel myself through ever y thing before me. Expectations attached to post-survivorship were vestigial traces of the cancer experience that could not be seen on any scan—remnants a nine-year-old girl could not identify but could carry the weight of. There must be success, there must be happiness and gratitude, you must inspire, you must make it worth it. There is no pause at any landing—just fast footfalls, out of breath, but nonetheless rushing down the steps, bold enough to skip some and never holding the railing. Yes, there is beauty in persevering despite fear, but does it not get exhausting? Sometimes it only takes one stutter step to pause long enough to look back at the dark stairwell and wonder how you got there.

Now that you’ve stopped, you realize with confusion that you still feel the same fear you did before the first step, despite having rushed down thousands more since then. You’ve checked all the boxes, met every milestone. Yet your practice has not cured the tightness in your chest because it wasn’t actually about taking the time to learn how to go down the stairs. It was a practice in repression. Quick adaptation did not rewrite the past. The same expectations loom over you; however, the adrenaline is fading, and you want to start again, but your legs won’t move, and you can’t seem to push through the fear the same way you did when you were little. So, there you are, standing in the middle of an endless staircase. What you choose to do next is very important.

I recently requested my full medical records from my time in treatment. In total, this was more than 500 pages, and it was still incomplete (I was informed some pages were destroyed in a storage fire, which seems very dramatic and cathartic). Among other things, I found a few gems used by professionals to describe me at the time: “sad appearing,” “soft-spoken,” and “unwilling to discuss fears.” A very flattering set of terms to describe a very confused little girl. Skimming over those medical scribbles provided context to how certain parts of treatment—expectations and fears—had been unconsciously permitted to stick around. Not only have these fears come along for the ride, but having gone untended, many of them have aged alongside me quite impressively. As I get older, they manifest in ways that make it harder to pretend it didn’t happen. They make it harder to go down the stairs.

Occasionally, I crunch ultimately meaningless numbers, calculating the chance of getting cancer again, and then I think about whether I can handle it. I wonder who will be around me, if I might have children by then, and if it will bring the same anguish I remember. I’m more responsible for my own care now, so I stress about insurance plans, emergencies, and the humbling knowledge that I cannot control the trillions of cells in my body. Then I scold myself for thinking so negatively, remind myself to enjoy the present moment, then get stressed out when I am not enjoying the present moment (this cycle continues indefinitely).

The original expectations will also assert themselves, reminding me that I need to keep moving because that’s what’s best—that’s how I “triumph.” As it all begins to unravel, there will be the unavoidable guilt that I’m not doing the “second chance at life” thing correctly. Yet, there will be a part of me that still grieves that my first chance was interrupted so soon and so abruptly.

Eventually, still stuck in your stairwell, you’ll need to sit down on the step. The people in front of you will carry on, and the people behind you will step around you, leaving you to watch in desperation, marveling at your bad luck. You’ll flush in embarrassment the longer you stay there. You’ll meditate, you’ll go to therapy, you’ll exercise; you’ll go through phases of trying to get your life together. You’ll lay out all the goals you held for the future and sift through them, deciding which ones you actually want and letting go of those you had previously convinced yourself were crucial to your character arc. You’ll try on different lifestyles, and after falsely convincing yourself that the growth is done, only then will you inevitably face the truth and begin the troublesome work. Naturally, the fear will follow that you’ve realized all this too late—a creeping dread that you’ve spent years building yourself in the wrong way. What you thought was recovery was actually a Jenga tower, doomed to collapse on the next turn, drawing gasps from onlookers.

Truthfully, there’s a chance the audience is smaller than you’d expect, and perhaps far less judgmental than you give them credit for. The tension in your shoulders will drop a bit.

After much time and what feels like a lifetime of reinventions, I am at the top of the next set of stairs. I am full of more hesitation than I ever was. Every influencer, celebrity, and author tells you this is normal for your 20s. It feels easy for them to say, but deep down, you still hope they’re right. I am willing to discuss my fears now—or at least, I try—because I’ve learned that everyone, cancer or not, is at least a little bit afraid. I’ve re-evaluated my expectations of myself and am doing my best to ignore external noise because I have learned by now there is no shame in holding the railing. I have softened significantly; I am still quiet, but not in a caged way. The quiet has become like the steady breath you take before going down the steps, before doing something you have been anticipating.

My dearest friends and family have been crucial to this process. It is something sacred to be assured their love for me is not contingent on how much I fulfill their preconceptions. I suspect that, in some way, it may not have been enough to sit by myself, and in knowing my loved ones, I’ve found they have pulled back the curtains of my ruminations to remind me there is still the matter of living to attend to.

I cannot give you definitive advice. I am, at the end of the day, only 25, just as I was only nine. I am aware circumstances vary widely, and while I am confident my experience is not singular, it may not necessarily be widely shared. The only thing I can say from my spot on this step is this: take your time, tend to your wounds, let the grief settle, and then get out of the damn stairwell. In retrospect, the stairs were never the point anyway.

This article was featured in the December 2024 “Expectations” issue of Elephants and Tea Magazine! Click here to read our magazine issues.