I used to think starting over was something that happened a few times in a person’s life.
You started over after high school, after college, after a move or a breakup or a career change. Maybe you reinvented yourself after becoming a parent or moving across the country or finally leaving a relationship that wasn’t right for you. Starting over felt like one of those big life events people talked about years later with the benefit of hindsight. It was something you survived once in a while.
I never imagined I would spend my twenties learning how to do it over and over again inside the same body.
Cancer has a way of making your life feel divided into versions of yourself. There was the version of me before diagnosis. The version that complained about being tired without realizing what exhaustion actually felt like. The version that assumed her body would do what bodies are supposed to do if you just treated them well enough. The version that thought plans made six months in advance were promises instead of possibilities.
I didn’t know I was living with her for the last time.
Nobody tells you that one of the hardest parts of illness isn’t simply losing your health. It’s losing familiarity with yourself.
The first time it happened, I thought it was temporary. I thought treatment would end and eventually I would go back to being me again. Maybe a little older, maybe a little wiser, maybe with some scars and stories, but still fundamentally the same person living in the same body.
Instead, I met someone new.
Suddenly my days revolved around medications, appointments, scans, side effects, insurance calls, lab results, and conversations I never imagined having in my twenties. My body stopped feeling automatic and started feeling like a full-time job. I knew platelet counts and medication schedules better than I knew what was happening in the outside world. Entire weeks became centered around preparing for treatment, recovering from treatment, and trying to feel human somewhere in between.
Just as I started figuring that version of myself out, things changed again.
Treatment changes.
Side effects change.
Your appearance changes.
Your energy changes.
Your priorities change.
The rules change constantly, and every time they do, you find yourself back at the beginning trying to learn a body that no longer behaves the way the last one did.
There have been seasons where I was learning how to exist without my hair. Seasons where I was learning how to recognize my own face through steroid swelling and medications and exhaustion. Seasons where I had to learn how to ask for help with things I used to do without thinking. Seasons where the biggest accomplishment of the day wasn’t productivity or ambition or checking things off a list, but simply eating enough, keeping it down, or making it through an appointment without bad news.
People outside of illness often see adaptation and call it strength.
Sometimes it is strength.
Other times it’s simply survival.
When your body changes, you don’t really get the luxury of refusing to adapt to it. You learn the new medications because you have to. You learn your new limits because your body teaches them to you whether you’re ready or not. You learn how much energy you have, how much pain you can push through, how much rest you need, and eventually those things become normal enough that you almost forget they weren’t always normal.
Then something changes and you start all over again.
I think that’s the part that people don’t understand.
They understand a diagnosis.
They understand treatment.
They understand being sick.
What they don’t always understand is the constant rebuilding.
The constant adjusting.
The constant grieving.
There is grief in looking at old pictures and missing your own face.
There is grief in remembering what your body used to do without asking permission first.
There is grief in realizing you’ve spent so much time adapting that you can no longer remember exactly when certain things stopped being possible.
There is grief in becoming homesick for versions of yourself that no longer exist.
Some days I miss old versions of me with an intensity that catches me off guard.
I miss the girl who assumed she had decades to figure everything out.
I miss the girl who didn’t know what her lab values meant.
I miss the girl who could make plans without mentally calculating treatment schedules, side effects, and backup plans if her body decided not to cooperate.
I miss the version of me that trusted tomorrow.
At the same time, I know there are pieces of myself that only exist because of everything that came after.
There is a version of me that understands how precious ordinary days really are.
A version of me that knows joy and grief are not opposites and can sit side by side at the same table.
A version of me that has laughed in infusion rooms and found humor in situations that should have broken her.
A version of me that has learned that life doesn’t always wait for certainty before demanding courage.
I don’t particularly love that lesson, but I carry it anyway.
Maybe that’s what starting over really is.
Maybe it isn’t erasing who you were and becoming someone completely new.
Maybe it’s learning how to carry every version of yourself forward at once.
The healthy version.
The scared version.
The angry version.
The hopeful version.
The exhausted version.
The version that wanted to give up.
The version that refused to.
They all still exist somewhere inside me.
They’re all still making me who I am.
I don’t know how many times a person can start over in one body.
I do know that some of us become experts at it long before we ever wanted the qualification.
You mourn who you were.
You make peace with who you are.
Then life changes the rules again and asks you to do it all over.
And somehow, impossibly, you do.
Not because you’re brave every day.
Not because you’re endlessly optimistic.
Not because you’ve found some secret reserve of strength that other people don’t have.
You do it because morning comes whether you’re ready for it or not.
You do it because people you love still walk through your front door and your dog still wants breakfast and your phone still rings and the world keeps moving forward.
You do it because eventually survival stops feeling heroic and starts feeling routine.
And maybe there is something strangely beautiful in that.
Not the suffering.
Not the loss.
Not the constant starting over.
But the fact that human beings can be handed lives they never wanted, bodies they no longer recognize, futures they never would have chosen, and still somehow find ways to laugh, to love, to hope, and to keep showing up for another day.
If that isn’t resilience, I don’t know what is.
I just wish it didn’t require so much practice.
If this resonated with you, whether you’re learning how to live in a changing body yourself or loving someone who is, I’d love for you to stick around.
Mojo & The Mess is where I write about cancer, chronic illness, grief, dark humor, dogs with questionable attitudes, and figuring out how to keep living when life looks nothing like you planned.
You can subscribe below so you don’t miss future posts, and if this one made you feel a little less alone, consider sharing it with someone who might need that reminder too.
We’re all starting over in one way or another.
Some of us are just getting a little more practice than we asked for.
Leave a comment