No one talks about how hard it is to be on the other side. 

Maybe because the alternative to surviving is death itself, and no one is around to tell you that story. Yet, this idea of surviving is so heavily positive-washed, bleached sunshine yellow by the optimism of everyone around the – choke – survivor. 

You must be so grateful, you did this! You managed to beat cancer. You’re so blessed, focus on all the things that you have overcome.

All of this is true. Surviving any kind of disease (or trauma) is an incredible feat, especially when you survive it with most of your bodily functions and mental faculties intact. 

So much is written about what it takes to persevere through cancer treatment. I know, I’ve contributed to this cavern of literature endlessly as well. I have consumed this literature ravenously, trying to remind myself when I was in the thick of things that cancer is not the end; that there are so many ways to get through things, to get across to this utopian other side. 

Maybe no one talks about how hard it is on the other side, because when you get to this other side, you realise that perhaps, that’s when the real battle begins. 

There is so much support for when you’re in the eye of the storm. Friends come by and make sure you’re okay. Family members are constantly hovering over your shoulder, sometimes unnecessarily so. The doctors are always on high-alert and responsive. You get a free pass for behaving badly, because, well, cancer. You’re allowed to throw tantrums and misbehave and cry at the drop of a hat. 

Then everything ends. For now, the cancer is gone. Everyone celebrates. There is a huge sigh of relief, the party ends and it is time for bed. Tomorrow, a new dawn begins on the other side. 

You wake up in bed, you’re at a new starting line, and you’re all alone. The world seems to have moved on without you, and you cannot really blame that for happening, because lives have to be lived. You’re encouraged to remember that you did the hardest thing, that this hard thing is already behind you. 

It is only later that you realise that perhaps the hardest thing, is what’s next. 

When you realise that now, you must begin sewing the broken pieces of your heart into something more functional and find ways to reintroduce your skittish, traumatised body back into the real world. 

When you’re awake at 3am in the morning, and your husband is peacefully sleeping beside you, and you have this overwhelming urge to cry so you tiptoe out of bed and go into the bathroom, your sanctuary, and you release silent wails into a balled-up towel so that you don’t wake him up, and you cry and cry, because you know you’re irrevocably changed now, and no one quite understands. 

When you’re sitting among friends and there is all this conversation buzzing around you, and it all sounds like noise, because you want to warn everyone that sometimes terrible things happen to good people, and good things happen to terrible people and there is no reason for any of it, that things happen, but you can never be the same again, and would they just quieten down and be grateful for all the terrible things they have been fortunate enough to avoid to this point? 

Somewhere on this other side, you swallow the screams and muffle the thoughts. You wash your face, drink a sip of water, continue performing merriness. You crawl back into bed at night and put on your favourite deep sleep meditation. Your heart is still heavy, but you must sleep, because you must go to work tomorrow, you have to be pretend you’ve this other side all figured out. 

+++

I am messaging S, continuing our never-ending conversation that began ten years ago. S is telling me about another woman with cancer that he’s just met and writes about what she shared about her own experience – that she is both always fearful and fearless at the same time. She reminds me so much of you, S says, and for some reason, my throat tightens, because S has found words through someone else who is walking in my shoes, making sense of my own feelings for which I am still learning the language for on this other side. 

Fearful and fearless at the same time. 

There are many things I care little for these days. 

I do not care so much about making someone happy at the expense of my own emotional and mental well-being. I do not care for overthinking other people’s reactions. I do not worry about new workplaces, or taking on projects, or meeting new people. I do not worry what someone will think of me if they see me walking on the street with my shorn hair and shorn spirit. I definitely do not give a fig about what my extended family thinks about the choices I have made with my life and how I have chosen to live. 

There were all things that used to matter before. 

Now, there are other things that take up my mental space, surprising me.  

A strange pain on my other breast makes me wonder, oh god, is this happening again? When I am lifting heavy weights and I feel a strain in my back, I worry, will my body give up on me today? When I’m travelling in a faraway country and feel tired after two hours of walking, I wonder whether this is how it will always be, me feeling like I’m lagging behind, a burden, while everyone else marches on. 

Fear, fear, fear.

Fearless, fearless, fearless. 

I write to S about learning to navigate this liminal space, and how it is often so lonely, this other side, how sometimes inevitably, I expect more from people that they are unable to give, because they have not lived through what I have, they just do not understand. 

S reminds me about the power of grace, about the beauty in mundanity and frivolity, about the ultimate smallness of life, no matter how much we try to big-hype-talk-it-up. 

Keep going back to the fact that none of this matters, S reminds me, that we all come and go the same way, and that the time in between is mundane and small and meaningless and yet, and yet. 

I smile, because I understand. After all, S and I have had different versions of this same conversation over the last decade. 

I write it down in my notes. 

Small life. Big heart. Keep going. 

I take a screenshot and make it my phone wallpaper, so that I remember, every day, as I navigate this other side. 

Fear, fearless, fear. 

Fearless, fear, fearless. 

…

Over the years, Arathi Devandran has written for e-zines and publications on a range of issues, serving as a youth columnist, general observer of the human condition, and dissector of the specific experiences of being a South Asian woman in a patriarchal and parochial world. More recently, she has become interested in exploring themes of inter-generational familial relations and navigating the complexities of self-growth through personal essays and autofiction. Arathi is currently working on her full-length manuscript. Her work can be found here. 

Disclaimer: All opinions and views here are my own.