07/16/2025
I’ve had this quote up next to my bathroom mirror for a couple years now. Put it up right after I was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer at the same time I was dumped by my then girlfriend. My body was in full fight or flight - even more than usual.
I had never felt more alone.
My heart wanted to close up, to believe every negative thing that has ever been thought or said about me. As the doctors chirped, “Don’t worry, you won’t die from this,” I wondered why I was even alive.
To be alone and sick…
I am still trying to understand the weight of it.
The impact
And I look at Andrea Gibson’s words. The ones next to my bathroom mirror, their books of poetry, their writings… I see their fervent zest for life that was hard-won and chosen. Because to truly live is a choice.
We can be dead and still breathing.
I know - I was and sometimes am.
Making a decision to choose the glimmers, to see the small and mighty ways that joy can live in our lives. To choose to see them is a daily decision we must make.
- thank you. Thank you for your words that helped keep me here, “to stay and find out” that open “wounds…are doors to an answer,” “screaming lessens the pain,” and “the darkness brings many truths that can bring the light to its knees.”
Rest in peace, power, and poetry 💜
(Quotes in text above taken from the poem “Every Time I Said I Want To Die” from the collection “You Better Be Lightening” by Andrea Gibson)
