Coming back, even though I'm scared...

I haven’t written here in a couple of years. Life happened, then bigger things happened, and somewhere along the way the words stopped coming.

This week they came back, not because things are better, but because I don’t really know where else to put them.

I have non-Hodgkin’s follicular lymphoma. This week has been full of tests, appointments, results, waiting rooms, and that particular kind of fear that hums constantly in the background. I’m on “watch and wait,” which sounds calm and sensible, but feels like standing on a trapdoor, waiting to find out if and when it’s going to open.

I feel like shit. Physically, emotionally, all of it.

Illness has a way of stripping life back. You find out how much happens internally, how much is invisible, and how even good people can be absent without meaning to be. I’m learning how much of this has to be carried quietly, and how heavy that can feel.

I don’t write this for sympathy or solutions. I write it because pretending I’m coping takes more energy than I have right now. Because being brave all the time is exhausting. Because fear doesn’t go away just because you’re being sensible or grateful or strong.

Right now, I am scared. I am grieving. I am waiting. And I am trying to hold myself together in a world that feels very quiet.

Maybe this blog will become a place where I keep telling the truth, even when it’s messy and unfinished. Maybe it won’t. For now, this is me saying: I’m still here. I’m struggling. And I’m allowed to say that out loud.