I’m grateful to be alive.
I shouldn’t have to say it. And yet.
Anyone who, like me, has gotten to the other side of breast cancer treatment gets the Questions.
These queries are designed to be answered in certain predictably soothing (for the asker) and anodyne ways.
How are you feeling? I’m good, thanks.
You must be so glad this is behind you. Of course I’m glad. Of course.
But here, subtext is everything. Beneath the kind words, the genuine entreaties, the expressions of concern, is a rippling current of subtext that goes like this: Be grateful. Be grateful. Be grateful.
I am grateful. I’m grateful that the lesion in my left breast showed itself on a mammogram in the spring of 2022. I’m grateful that I was quickly connected to top-notch care. I’m grateful for my surgeons’ staggering skill and tremendous compassion, and for my nurses. I’ll never forget the night nurse who brought me a cup of coffee at 6 a.m. on the morning after my surgery. It wasn’t great coffee, but it got me up and out of bed and … and it’s literally just now occurred to me that this may have been her ulterior motive.
I’m grateful, of course, for every single person who hugged me, who said “You got this,” who sent food. And for the cookies (oh, my goodness, the cookies!).
But here’s something that I’ve come to realize, a little more than a year after my bilateral mastectomy and DIEP flap reconstruction surgery: Gratitude is a complicated and difficult word. And when I’m asked the Questions, that rippling current (be grateful be grateful be grateful) feels less like a pleasant stream burbling along, and more like a set of rapids that can easily carry me away. Gratitude, I’ve come to realize, is a trap.
What if I’m not feeling particularly thankful, globally, daily, or just in the precise moment one of the Questions is asked? What if, say, on that particular day, I have a weird feeling in my abdomen because the muscles all feel like they’re in different places from where they were last year, and I’m afraid that I’ll never feel normal again? What if, every so often, I get a look at myself in a mirror and think how last year I was on an operating table with pieces of my body being moved around?
Am I allowed to answer in that way? Is that okay, for them, or for me? Can I be grateful and still not entirely okay? Can those things coexist? It’s an uncomfortable middle space to live in — I know because I live in it. But I don’t want to be obligated to express gratitude I don’t always feel, for other people’s comfort. Or, to be fair, for my own comfort, for my own truth.
What about the times I wake up in the morning with aches that weren’t there before? Is it regular aging — or the peculiar aging of cancer, where a year feels more like 5? I’m missing and mourning the year that just passed, but I also feel like more things — more time, more opportunities, more everything — slipped through my fingers while I was working on staying alive. That makes me feel less grateful, and more anxious and sad.
So yes, I am grateful. But the truth is — if anyone is really asking — I’m also tired and scared a lot, and feel beaten up and bruised still (sometimes physically, mostly emotionally).
Getting free of the gratitude trap isn’t easy, but it’s necessary.
I’m here to say this, as clearly as I’m able: You don’t, in fact, have to be “fine” or “good.” You can’t treat your own self as if you’re a concerned colleague on a Zoom call, asking the Questions and waiting for the soothing, practiced, easy answer. (I’m fine. Thank you so much for asking.)
With your own self, you gotta own up.
Grateful, but with a million caveats, a thousand asterisks, lots and lots of detailed footnotes.
Feel what you feel. Be happy to be alive — I am! But leaving cancer behind is not as easy as locking a door behind you. Because this is you now. This is me now. Grateful. Alive. Different.
