This Body is Bullshit

There’s this weird space you land in after you’ve survived something big. People look at you like you’re a warrior, a fighter, a walking inspiration—and yeah, I’ve earned some of that. But what they don’t see is how exhausting it is to keep surviving. Every day. Quietly. Without falling apart.

I’m still in pain. All the time.

I don’t say that for sympathy—it’s just the truth. My joints ache. My body feels tight and inflamed. My skin pulls in places it didn’t before. My chest feels foreign, like someone else’s body stitched onto mine. I wake up tired. I go to bed tired. I’ve been through seven breast-related surgeries, plus a hysterectomy, gallbladder removal, abdominal incisions, drains, infections, radiation, hormone treatments—and that’s just the highlight reel. My body is beat up. It doesn’t work the way it used to, and it certainly doesn’t feel good.

But I keep going.

I think a lot of people assume I must feel better by now. That I’m “on the other side” of all this. That I’m lucky it wasn’t worse. And yes—I am lucky in some ways. I’m alive. I’m still here. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay.

It’s hard to explain the mental whiplash of being so grateful to wake up every day… and also being kind of mad that waking up still hurts. That I still have to take medications that mess with my energy, my mood, my bones. That I still live with the very real possibility that my cancer will come back in 10 or 20 years because I unknowingly carried it for two years post-mastectomy. That even on “good” days, my body feels like it’s asking me to lie down.

And somehow, in the middle of all this, life just keeps demanding more.

There’s work. And bills. And texts to answer. And people to comfort. And relationships to maintain. I love my life, I do—but it’s a lot. I work hard, probably too hard. I shop when I’m anxious, I laugh when I’m hurting, I try to be the one who lifts the room. But it’s all a delicate balance, and some days I don’t have the energy for any of it.

I’m also still grieving. My mom died in 2021, during the thick of everything—right after I had sepsis, in the middle of all the rest of the bullshit. That same year, I lost my dog Gus, who had been with me through so much. My grandmother, who was truly my anchor, passed away years before that. I’m constantly processing one kind of heartbreak or another, and yet I show up. I smile. I keep going.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m too positive. If I’ve made it look too easy. If I’ve become so good at pretending I’m okay that people stopped asking how I really am. Maybe that’s on me. Maybe I don’t know how to let people see me when I’m not “on.” Maybe I feel like I have to keep being the strong one because everyone else is just barely holding it together.

But I’m tired.

I want life to be easier. I want to feel good in my body again. I want to spend money on experiences and fixing my house, not just retail therapy to distract myself. I want peace in my bones. I want softness. I want to stop living like I’m running out of time, even though a part of me still believes I am.

I don’t need to be a beacon of anything. I just want to be me again—whatever that looks like now.