To my love,

I found you somewhere between the noise of strangers and twinkle lights of a small town I didn’t know very well. I notice your mustache. Thick above a mouth that didn’t rush to speak.

As I read your Tarot, you were seemingly uncomfortable, but your eyes, steady as they are, held a longing like you wanted to lean closer, but did not quite know how.

Your comfortable self-reliance stood out. Noticing a problem and taking care of it quietly, a display of thoughtfulness that snuck up on me. And that same thoughtfulness turned toward me, too. Soft thoughtful touch cradling my neck from a sincere place of wanting to help. Helping to ease a pain in my body you didn’t even cause.

Only two encounters in the same room and I felt like my skin might light on fire if it brushed against yours. My trip swiftly concluded but our voices wrapped around each other for hours slowly building a bridge made of words and warmth across thousands of miles. Those hours turned to days, to weeks, months.

One plane ticket and you were loading your suitcase into the back of my car. Seeing you in person again felt electric and strange, like walking through a memory I hadn’t made yet. We managed our nerves by falling in love in amusement park lines and technicolor nights on mattresses on the floor. We did it scared. “I’d have regretted it forever if I didn’t go,” you said.

With phone lines and airport good-byes, we found each other everywhere. We made homes in hotel rooms. From suites in Florida to a camper van in misty Oregon. The valleys in California and a cozy basement in Virginia held up the FaceTime backdrops to budding love. We kept moving, finding new places to exist together.

There was something about our love that buzzed under the surface that felt much like waiting in those amusement park lines. The anticipation for an exciting experience that I knew I wanted more than anything never really went away. We were always waiting. Waiting for the next trip to see each other, then waiting for the next time we say goodbye. A quiet consistency never came because we just did not quite make it to the ride we were hoping for.

In the heat of our first summer, I got the news. An unwelcome, ugly line carved through our grand plans to find that place that felt like home for US. You flew to me and folded yourself into my new tortuous reality. Holding my hand with silent strength in your grip as if to say, “we’re in this together.”

You watched as I began to fade — leaving you mostly alone. Unsure of when I would be there for you and when I would not be. Unsure of which memories were made and which ones were lost. My mind faltered, and my strength drained away. My hair and forty pounds of muscle and fat vanished before we even had the chance to catch our breath.

You held me through the sickness, but more than that, you kept me steady. Encouraging me both up and down mountains. When I was ambushed by unexpected sickness, you held a calm leadership back to the safety of our home. You kept me looking after myself even when I thought I couldn’t.

Filled up water bottles and forehead kisses on my freckles throughout the many days I slept and slept. I felt those. As my hair fell, my face swelled, and my body shrank, I lost the regard I once felt for my own beauty. But you didn’t. “You’re beautiful every day you wake up,” you would say in a time where waking up at all was a beautiful thing it its own right.

You took care of me, yes, but it was deeper than that. You saw me at my most fragile, and you stayed. You stayed because that is who you are. A rare and steadfast compassion that I’ve only encountered before in my late father’s heart.

Before we can even begin to grieve, a new intrusion rears its ugly head. Cancer. Again. This time in your father, in Virginia — a place I cannot follow.

The further from my treatment we walk together, the more the reality sets in. We are forever changed. Untangling the barbwire knots that cancer left behind rips and pulls at the fragile seams of our hearts, deepening wounds we can only heal one way — apart. Our careful, wild beginning was stolen. And now a rediscovery must take place. We both deserve to have that.

The irony isn’t lost on me: cancer was the reason you came here from Virginia, and now it is the very thing that is taking you back. Exactly two years after the day you bought your plane ticket for our first date, you board your flight back to the house you grew up in.

Watching you leave cut me open to reveal a deep love I quietly knew was there but wasn’t sure what to call it. You will always be my love. I will carry the impact your character left — thoughtful, gentle, unflinchingly loyal — like a steady light through all the darkness that’s come before and whatever may come next.

Take care, my love. I’ll be seeing you.

With all my love,

Beloved Ideal Self,

As I write this, I find myself in the midst of my chemotherapy treatments. It’s the fifth one out of a total of eighteen. Sitting here in seat eleven, with its lucky view of the beautiful Burbank mountains, I can’t help but think of you. I envision you as someone who is healed, happy, and radiantly beautiful. You possess a deep wisdom that I have yet to discover. The kind of wisdom earned by a warrior.

There are still thirteen more infusion treatments to undergo, along with two major surgeries and radiation treatments, before I can reach the point where I become a cancer-free survivor like you. As a Stage 3 Triple Negative Breast Cancer patient, the distance between us feels vast. However, these past ten weeks of living with cancer have taught me a profound lesson in forgiveness. A lesson I wouldn’t trade for anything.

None of us are guaranteed a long and healthy life, and yet we often take it for granted. For so long, I held onto anger towards the people I love. Now, I understand that our purpose on this earth is simply to love and forgive one another. And so, I have forgiven them all – those who have caused us pain. I have even forgiven myself for the actions I took to survive. I now realize that it was these burdens that gave rise to this cancer. I have released them all, not just for my own healing, but also so that one day, I can become you. So that you never have to go through this again.

From this vantage point on the fourth floor infusion center, I can see a greater perspective. I see the struggles and pain that each person, even those who have hurt me, go through. It fills me with compassion and empathy. I send them love from here and believe that our world needs more care and understanding for each other’s pain. We place unrealistic standards upon ourselves and others, which can never truly be met.

I can see you now. You are wise, strong and beautiful. You help other people find their way toward forgiveness. You help them find the way to put their burdens down. You show them how beautiful forgiveness is so they can feel the peace it brings wash over them without having to pay in suffering.

In my journey towards becoming you, I have learned the importance of forgiveness and the power of love. I hold nothing but gratitude for the lessons cancer brought me. They were lessons I desperately needed to learn. I stand with my arms open wide, welcoming the lessons that have yet to come. I hope to continue growing closer to you, my Ideal Self, with each passing day.

With all the love in the world,

Katie C’etta