The Audacity of Some

Sarah Downey

Regardless of the pace at which I move, I still move some. I hold onto this some as a reminder that I am still here, still moving, still alive.

The last eight days (or did I mean centuries?) have felt like the ocean. Just when I think I've finally gotten my footing, another enormous body of water comes along to remind me that I am, in fact, not in charge here. The water keeps coming, crashing and rolling onto the shore, turning over shells, crabs, and children's sand toys. Meanwhile, I'm standing thirty feet away from becoming any of those things, the salt water washing over my balding head as though I, too, belong to the whales.

In other words, there is a pace that the world sets, that the ocean sets, that my disease sets. And right now, I seem to operate behind all of them.

Fuck this some. I want to return to the pace I set before my diagnosis, when I held a job, took a handful of classes, student-taught, and somehow still found time to go on walks, journal almost daily, cook new recipes, read for pleasure, and travel. I want to move through a day without having to negotiate with my body about what I can and cannot do. I want to be exhausted because I've done too much, not because I've done too little.

The only thing worse than comparing myself to pre-diagnosis Sarah is comparing myself to my endless Instagram feed of healthy young adults.

My Instagram algorithm seems convinced that everyone my age is either getting married, getting pregnant, getting into an Ivy League school, or getting lost somewhere in Southeast Asia. I'm not sure when I missed the memo.

When we're young, we're told that the sky's the limit, and for a moment, we believe it. We make plans as though time is an endless resource, as though the world is ours to explore in whatever order we please. But a terminal cancer diagnosis has a way of crashing the party.

I power off my phone and look down at my hands.

This is what I have. What is right in front of me. My some.

Someone else's some might look like studying for a graduate exam while taking care of their child. Mine looks different. I'm not in graduate school, and I don't have a child. So why am I measuring myself against someone else's circumstances? Why am I insisting on using a ruler that was never meant to measure my life?

Today, I got out of bed. An accomplishment, apparently. I celebrated taking my medications with breakfast, attempted to write something resembling a coherent thought, and promptly passed out on my bed. My desktop continued glowing in the corner, presumably more productive than I was.

I cleaned up my room and made my bed before my nurse arrived to drain my PleurX. Now, I'm finally sitting here writing something, albeit whatever this is, while waiting for my best friend to come over so we can watch Dancing with the Stars and eat dinner.

That's my day. Nothing particularly extraordinary happened. And yet, when I walk through it without constantly measuring it against the life I thought I'd be living, I feel a little more fulfilled.

I'm learning that gratitude and resentment can occupy the same room. They don't particularly like each other, but neither seems interested in leaving.

I can appreciate my little day and still think cancer can go fuck itself. Both things can be true.