Waiting for cancer results taught me how quickly a body can stop feeling like home

Dear Delyara, People say “try not to think about it,” as if thought were the main issue. It wasn’t. The real horror was embodiment. Living inside a body that had become uncertain. Every ache suddenly charged. Every sensation potentially meaningful. Every ordinary movement slightly contaminated by the possibility that life had already changed and I was simply waiting for the phone call to make it official. I still remember standing in the supermarket choosing fruit while one part of me was quietly asking whether I would still be alive next year. That split in reality is hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t lived it. The outer life continues. The inner life freezes around a question. I got through the waiting. That doesn’t mean it ended when the result came. Some kinds of fear remain in the body as knowledge. Mine did.