Lucy looks up, her eyes shining under the cafe lights. Daniel is the first to start cheering, the rest of the crowd’s trance breaking and cheering too. Lucy smiles, takes a small bow, and makes her way back to our table. Daniel wraps her in a tight hug. They’re in their own world, experiencing this together. Making something meaningful out of it.
Most days, it’s difficult to comprehend the magnitude of what I lost with Grant. Believing a partner is someone who sticks by you. Someone who wants to take care of you. Someone who doesn’t look at you differently even though you’re sick. It’s only when it’s staring me in the face, taunting me with what could have been, that I feel the loss, a crater in the shadows of my heart.
“Ruby?” Eitan shakes me. “You’re up!”
“Ruby H?”Maddy calls again.
“You’ve got this.” Eitan nudges me to stand up.
“Ruby?” Maddy calls one more time.
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Eitan whispers.
The cold sweat breaking out on my forehead would beg to differ. I’m supposed to get up in front of a room full of strangers and bare my soul? I can barely make conversation with people I’ve known for years! What if they don’t understand my specific brand of dark-humor-meets-cosmic-nihilism? None of these people know me.
None of these people know me.I could be anyone. I could be someone brave enough to stand up and get on that stage.
As if he can hear the thoughts and anxiety buzzing around me, Eitan reaches for my hand. And squeezes.
None of these people know me.I can be anyone. To prove it to myself, I stand up.
“Come on up!”Maddy waves her hand for me to come forward.
I clutch my phone and snake through the tables full of people.
“There she is! Let’s give her a hand!” The crowd claps, and the sound startles me.
“Good luck!” Maddy whispers away from the mic, before handing it to me.
“Thanks,” I mutter. A shaky finger pulls up my most recent Notes app note, filled with ephemera.
The crowd is quiet, waiting for me to begin. A sudden burst of noise pulls me out of myself. Eitan howls a cheer, the same as when we swam in Lake Michigan.I’m alive. I’m here.
The sound makes me feel brave enough to read.
“This is an untitled, unfinished piece,” I say into the mic. My words expand and fill the room.
I take a deep breath.
“Why are we getting cancer? They don’t know, but they’ve gotten better at treating it. It just causes heart disease, infertility, and sometimes, another (new!) type of cancer. We can cure all the diseases in the world, but there’s no escaping suffering. Joke’s on us. It’s a part of life, an exchange we are all forced to make at the instant our little lungs first fill with breath. An agreement that you can experience the kaleidoscopic euphoria of being alive, but you have to suffer. Otherwise you’re not living. And sometimes you’re the specific person caught in the crosshairs of this divinely mandated need to suffer. You’re theone without hair, strapped to an IV pole, medicine that feels suspiciously like poison being pumped through your body.”
I pause. Wait for people to start booing. I’ve never considered these palatable thoughts. It’s an emotional rant absent of answers. I should be replete with answers. Nuggets of wisdom gleaned from this gauntlet.How do you live? You keep going! You’ve got a tank full of gratitude and an invisible tattoo of ‘carpe diem’ on your forehead!
But people are listening. I keep going.
“Did you know the concept of survivorship didn’t exist until 1985? Before that, they cut you open, pumped you with experimental drugs, sewed you up and sent you on your way. ‘You’re good!’ I imagine the doctor saying with a glowing chuckle and a pat on the back. Some women didn’t even know they had cancer before the surgeon removed their breast. They would go under general anesthesia for the biopsy, and if the doctor found cancer, they would do an immediate mastectomy. More efficient, cheaper for the insurance companies.” I pause, and swallow. “They didn’t want that breast anyway, right? Why would they? It had cancer. It was poisoned. Nothing left to save.
“What evenissurvivorship? What is illness? How do I name myself after going through something like this? Do I knight myself? Anoint myself so that when I walk through the world, people see me as I am, as everything I’ve gone through, everything I have become? Survivor makes it sound like I lived through battle. Like I experienced something brutal. But this is my body, my cells. What if I don’t want to be at war with my body? What do I call myself then?”
My phone drops to my side. I look out, unable to read the room.
Someone begins clapping. Then, more people join in. Soon, applause rebounds throughout the room. Eitan stands, clapping his hands way out in front of his chest, sending the ovationdirectly to me. I walk back to the table, smiling, tears falling, a bit of weight lifting in the process.
“You are incredible,” Eitan says. His hands are restless, like they’re fighting the urge to hold me. Or maybe that’s just what I wish they wanted to do. I want to thank him, somehow, for encouraging me to do that. To show in some way that they were my words, but it was his bravery that made me share them. I grab his cheek and lean forward, planting an urgent kiss.
Eitan has seen the poised and unraveled versions of myself. And he doesn’t spook or pull away. It seems to bring out his own frayed edges. And there’s something immeasurably comforting about that.
He pulls me closer and wraps me in a hug that feels like home.
