Girl With Cancer Who Is Going to Be Okay

On consoling others and the performance of okayness. Also, "A Walk to Remember" mentioned!

I stood outside a dressing room holding a weeping señora in my arms.

My boyfriend Andrew and I were at El Norteño de Savy, an incredible western wear store in LA’s Boyle Heights stocked with everything you’d need to stage a re-enactment of Chalino Sanchez getting handed a death threat from a cartel mid-concert as well as Magic the Gathering cards from the game shop located inside the store and $1 nopales set up on a plastic table.

El Norteño’s dressing room is tiny, but the energy within is explosive thanks to a “Dirrty”-era Christina Aguilera poster that’s been cut in half and taped to scuffed up opposing walls, making everyone who steps inside the meat in a tight Xtina sandwich.

After trying on a stack of Wrangler dress jeans favored by norteño grouperos inside the Xtina coffin, I was whipped by a sudden chemo-induced hot flash. I stepped out and took off my beanie to cool down. The señora shopkeeper approached me, jarred by my appearance.

She and I had only met about an hour before, but we quickly established an auntie and niece-like rapport as we chatted while I shopped. Pretty typical señora behavior, but then my bald head forced the talk: I have cancer, and my Pitbull-esque appearance is due to chemotherapy. Her hands clutched to her chest in upset. “Ay, la enfermedad es terrible,” she lamented, and asked about my treatments.

Then the señora opened up about her son, who has epilepsy. Her eyes filled with tears, and suddenly she was weeping—for herself, her son, and for me. As Xtina looked over us, I hugged her and told her that her son is very fortunate to have her as a mother. Then I smiled wide and repeated a line that’s become ingrained in every conversation I’ve had since my diagnosis: I’m going to be okay. You could almost hear “Beautiful” begin to play.

Non-sick people see a sick person and it triggers something in them: fear, sadness, fascination, curiosity, disgust, maybe a weird “A Walk to Remember” kink. But I’ve also had to do more consoling than I expected, sometimes in unexpected places like an early ‘00s jerk-off closet that was converted into a dressing room.

In consoling others I’m actually reassuring them that cancer isn’t a guaranteed death sentence. Everyone is scared of cancer. Reasonably so. They need the meme. They need a Girl With Cancer Who Is Going to Be Okay.

Meeting someone who’s sick creates an instant bond if you are also affected in some way by illness, and opens up a dialogue you don’t get to have elsewhere. The same thing happens when I meet someone whose also into “Love Island UK,” albeit with a lot less emotional lifting.

I expected some level of consoling others, like when it was time to break the news to my family and close friends. I didn’t mind. I’ve invited and nourished love into my life, so much so that the thought of my suffering and possible death fills others with sorrow. That’s a blessing.

Still, Andrew marvels at how often he overheard me on the phone saying “don’t worry, I’m going to be okay” to loved ones sobbing on the other end of those extremely rough calls. These are people I love. I want them to feel better. It doesn’t bother me or feel like I’m lying, maybe because I don’t know if I am.

My wonderful, talented doctors at City of Hope say I’ll be cancer-free by the holidays – after chemo, a mastectomy, and radiation – but I suppose we don’t really know until I’m actually there, actually okay. And, as I’ve been warned, recurrence is possible. Still, I’ve just gotten used to repeating the line over and over again. I’m going to be okay, I’m going to be okay, I’m going to be okay. I am Girl With Cancer Who Is Going to Be Okay.

I do this for myself, but more and more it feels like I say it to reassure others who I intuit need to hear it. Maybe more than I do. Even a sweet lady helping me pick out Wranglers that don’t give me camel toe.

But it does make me reckon with a lifelong need to perform, whether it was for my tias to make them laugh, my siblings so we can just choose any fucking restaurant for Mother’s Day, or now for my mom so she doesn’t cry because I’m sick.

With cancer, I’m wrestling with this innate sense of performance and how I actually feel. Sometimes they’re so intertwined I can’t tell them apart. I’m so used to pleasing others, rooted in a fear of getting in trouble by my family, that I don’t always have a grasp of my truest state. It’s often hours or days later that I realize I was upset about something I said was totally chill. Of course, I feel all the things anyone would feel when having cancer. That’s base level, but on top of that I’m dancing so mommy won’t cry at Black Angus on Mother’s Day.

Well-meaning people take great pains to tell me it’s okay to not be okay. I’ve seen the Instagram inspo graphics. I know I won’t get arrested by the Positivity in the Face of Cancer Police if I say I feel like shit. But I also can’t say that without the caveat that I’m going to be okay; without providing some comfort. I don’t fully know why yet, and I’m not sure it matters unless it hurts me. And it doesn’t. Taking care of people matters to me.

My presence seems to be a reminder of the fleeting nature of life or whatever, and as we all seek answers in this violent, too often unjust world, maybe it’s comforting to see someone whose life is threatened by illness not give in to doom. I don’t think I’m any different than my pre-cancer self, just balder and with chemo-induced skin issues. Perhaps that’s the point.

And believe me, I worry that if I’m a little too Girl With Cancer Who Is Going to Be Okay, I will somehow tempt fate and become the character in the cancer movie whose death teaches everyone a lesson about life. I don’t want to be the Mandy Moore! I can’t wear that many earth tones, I’ll look like a cult wife. Cancer isn’t bad enough, you had to give her the tragic mousey girl edit!

But I also don’t want to be another reason people feel scared and isolated in the world. Consoling others is care, and I want to give it. Though I’m still juggling my okayness and whether or not I’m performing it, at the heart I know I just want to take care of myself and others during this. I can be Girl With Cancer Who Is Going to Be Okay, and it doesn’t mean it’s not real.