Accepting who I am 13 years after my cancer diagnosis

Thirteen years ago, I was a 15-year-old girl sitting in a yellow-walled doctor’s office, listening to my pediatrician tell me I had AML Leukemia.

The vivid image gives me goosebumps just thinking about it now. The sound of Dr. Friedman’s sigh, and the clank of the pen he dropped on the table that folded down from the wall. The woman standing in the doorway, dressed in white. The thoughts that swarmed my head of all the things I wouldn’t get to do. The texture of my straightened, red hair as I wove my fingertips through it and watched as strays escaped on my black top.

Each year, a part of the image loses clarity. The brand of my mom’s purse that lay on the floor. The face of the nurse in the doorway. The color of my backpack. Which pair of jeans I was wearing.

But it’s the feelings that have gained clarity.

For the first few years, the dominating narrative was how unfair it was.

I took care of my health. I studied hard. I tried my best to be a good person. I already lost my dad to Leukemia. So, what did I do to deserve this?

Then, the next few years, I thought about how cancer shaped me. How it influenced me to not pursue medicine and pursue my dream career of sports journalism instead. How I thought I grew from it was becoming the fearless, ambitious woman who had no right to be sad ever again because she had been through worse.

Now, 13 years later, I think about relieving cancer from the blame. The blame that it changed my life in ways that I couldn’t have on my own without it.

Maybe I don’t blame cancer, but I do accept it’s what makes me who I am.

I say “makes,” because it lives within me, maybe not in my cells, but in my metaphorical heart.

The somberness of accepting that is outweighted by the comfort of it, though. I thought that surviving cancer made me invincible, but it made me vulnerable.

I love a little too deeply. I care too much about my career. I struggle letting go of people. I’m stubborn about doing things I don’t want to do. I take constructive criticism as a personal attack. I’m too open about my feelings. I’m anxious every time I get sick. I’m anxious in general. I’m messy. I’m too much.

So why didn’t this grave experience make me impermeable to the rest of my life’s adversities? Isn’t that what I survived for? Isn’t that what we’re taught to believe: that when you’re down, think about that time you… I don’t know… almost DIED? And whatever petty problem or heartbreak in the moment won’t compare?

And then I realize that I’m once again blaming cancer for the attributes I actively try to change, rather than accepting that I’m who I am because of it.

I love deeply. I’m passionate about my career. I hold onto the people and places I care about. I’m tenacious. I feel criticism in my core. I’m honest about my feelings. I’m aware of my body’s history with illness. I’m eager. I’m scattered. I’m enough.

And maybe that means I see life and its pettiness on a deeper level — because I thought I’d never get that life back.

I’ve accepted that.