Afterwards

Cancer has a way of leaving its fingerprints on everything. And after that, it becomes less about moving on, and more about learning how to live alongside it.

We might not have spoken every day. We might not have been childhood friends. We might only have had this one, terrible thing in common. But you became my person.

Maybe that’s what silver linings really are. Not big, life-changing moments, but small pieces that only start to make sense when you look back and realise they were shaping something all along.

The aftermath of cancer has shaped me in ways I’m still trying to untangle, leaving me suspended somewhere between who I was, who I thought I’d become, and whoever I’m still trying to figure out how to be now.