Three Weeks Ago
I had a future.
Not an extraordinary one.
No grand ambitions. No dramatic plans.
Just a life that stretched forward in a way I understood.
Then a doctor spoke a few words, and the map disappeared.
It wasn't a long conversation.
It didn't take much.
A handful of syllables, and suddenly every version of tomorrow looked different.
Now every conversation is about management.
Managing symptoms. Managing expectations. Managing fear.
Managing medications. Managing side effects. Managing appointments.
Managing a body that no longer feels predictable.
There are treatment plans, care strategies, statistics offered carefully, optimism practiced like a skill.
People speak as though effort itself can bargain with reality.
They want to discuss the future.
I'm still sitting in the moment those words were spoken.
They have already moved on to adaptation and resilience.
I'm still trying to understand what happened.
And always, eventually:
"It could be worse."
As though suffering becomes smaller when compared to someone else's.
As though grief needs permission by being the worst grief in the room.
As though only visible losses count.
But something was lost.
No funeral marked it. No flowers arrived. No one missed work.
Still, something ended.
Three weeks ago, a version of me died.
The person who never examined a hand and wondered what it might not do ten years from now.
The person who never calculated the cost of ordinary movements.
The person who never looked at a staircase, a grocery bag, a jar lid, and measured effort.
The person who assumed the future belonged to them the way it belonged to everyone else.
There are conversations you imagine waiting for you farther down the road.
The ones about what the body can lose.
The ones about adapting.
The ones about permanence.
I did not expect to arrive at them this soon.
People want me hopeful.
They want courage. Determination. Perspective.
They want the story where I overcome.
Maybe I will.
But right now, I need room for the terror.
Room for the grief.
Room to say: I'm scared.
Not occasionally. Not in passing.
Scared in the middle of the night. Scared in waiting rooms. Scared of what I know. Scared of what I don't.
Because the diagnosis arrived, but everything else stayed.
I still go to work.
Emails still appear. Deadlines still arrive. Laundry still piles up. The trash still needs taking out.
The sink still fills with dishes.
And some days, I cannot hold it together.
Some days, I cry until there is nothing left.
Not because one thing happened.
Because everything did.
My body changed. My future changed. And I am trying to understand a life I did not choose.
Afterward, I wipe my face and answer emails.
I hate that part.
How quickly the world asks me to return to normal when I don't even know what normal is anymore.
People are kind.
People care.
People ask how I am.
But they do not wake up inside this body.
They do not feel every ache and wonder what it means.
They do not carry the fear into every quiet moment.
And sometimes I am angry.
At people trying to help. At people who say the wrong thing. At people who say nothing at all.
I know they did not cause this.
I know they are trying.
But there is nowhere for this anger to go.
So it spills out over small things.
A question. A comment. A reminder.
And then comes the guilt.
The grief.
The fear.
And the guilt for not carrying it better.
Because the world did not stop when mine did.
The bills still come.
The insurance forms still need signatures.
The appointments still need scheduling.
The prescriptions still need refilling.
There is no pause button for grief like this.
No leave of absence from reality.
Some days, it feels like I am carrying two full-time jobs:
Living my life,
and managing what happened to it.
I leave the house carrying a bag of contingencies.
Braces.
Pain medication.
Nausea medication for the medication.
Things I never needed until suddenly I did.
I reach for them automatically now.
And every item inside feels like evidence.
This is real.
This is real.
This is real.
Some mornings, my hands wake up before I do.
Already aching.
Already stiff.
Already negotiating.
And the world asks me to begin the day anyway.
I am tired.
Not the kind of tired sleep fixes.
The kind that settles into your bones.
The kind that arrives before the day begins.
The kind that comes from carrying fear while pretending to be functional.
The kind that comes from adapting to a life I have not even had time to mourn.
People reassure me that life isn't over.
I know.
That isn't what I am mourning.
I am mourning the life I thought I had.
Not because it was perfect.
Because I thought there would be more time.
More time before my body became something I had to think about.
More time before ordinary movement required planning.
More time before fatigue became a permanent guest.
More time before every future came with an asterisk.
Three weeks ago, I was given a name for what was happening to me.
But I am still standing at the place where the map ended.
Not ready for a new road.
Not ready for a new version of myself.
Just standing there, trying to understand where tomorrow begins.