I will let my voice sing, even if only for myself.

Photo: Field of Wildflowers by Gantner

I started off 2025 in pain.

Part of the pain was my own doing. I had finally decided to go ahead with the tattoo appointment I had postponed for a year (yes, this is not a joke), and after six hours of almost ASMR-level pain, I ended up with something so incredibly beautiful on my back that I still gasp whenever I catch sight of it in the mirror. But I digress.

I guess this other pain was also of my own doing, though far less aesthetic. Sometime on New Year’s Day, I was tenderly rolling over to my left side when I felt thirsty. I reached out for my bottle of water, which I usually keep on the floor, when I felt myself dramatically falling off the edge of the bed and landing on my water bottle—rubber straw first, straight into my jugular. The pain. Oh, the bloody pain. And then the swelling. And then the grim realization that I somehow fell off my own bed and impaled myself with a rubber straw, which, had I fallen any faster or with greater impact, might have ruptured some part of my throat and rendered me speechless, or... dead.

Imagine if that was to be the way I went—she survived cancer, but instead, was killed because she fell off her bed onto a rubber straw.

In the last six days, my throat has been tremendously sore. It’s the left side of my throat; incidentally, the left side of my body has been in some form of pain for the last few years. If it’s not the surgery scar feeling unbearably tight, it’s my left glute twinging every time I climb stairs. Or my left temple screaming in agony, causing my left eye to tear repeatedly, or my left ovary feeling swollen and inflamed.

It is very difficult to describe what chronic pain feels like, and in reality, what I experience is probably a weird combination of growing older and dealing with a body that has been assaulted by so many drugs. It’s debilitating, and at its worst, tragically amusing when I wake up in the middle of the night clutching my left leg because it’s spasming from a muscle cramp.

Nobody talks very much about these things that sprout like wildflowers—the blooming instances of pain on a perfectly normal, sunny day, on this other side of disease. Splotches of angry color that feel like someone has grabbed a fistful of your hair and yanked your head. It’s whiplash, this reminder. This reminder that you really aren’t the same, and probably never will be.

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The pain in my throat, in retrospect, is wildly symbolic of the voicelessness that has plagued me for the last six months.

Between the travel for work, working on a big project with my husband, and dealing with, well, daily life-isms, I stopped listening to that little voice of mine that had been the captain of my vessel.

I have struggled with voicelessness all my life.

I come from an extended family filled with people who shout—often nonsense—at each other to be heard. My rage dreams, which I grapple with often, usually involve me giving a tongue-lashing to some of my least-favorite relatives, the ones who have spent their lives screaming the loudest to intimidate, to terrify. I often wake up from these dreams clutching my throat, as if relieved that I was finally able to voice my displeasure and disappointment in ways I have never been able to in real life.

I am also an only child to very strong-willed parents. Finding my voice in my household was not easy—it often meant that my mother and I crossed swords, and those were difficult, painful times. I am still healing from that season of my life; in my darkest moments, those words—the ones I have heard, and the ones I have said—continue to haunt me.

Moving away from home, living apart from my family, and most of all, writing, have helped me to navigate this labyrinth of voicelessness. In my mid-20s, I became a lot less afraid of putting my foot down, of letting my pain be known, of expressing my anger and frustrations, of navigating the conflicts both on the outside and the inside. Cancer, however, has been the real MVP in this process.

When you’re sick as hell, and when everyone around you thinks they know better than you do about what you need, you have no choice but to use your voice. I used my voice with doctors and put them in their place when I didn’t want to pursue certain medical protocols. I used my voice over and over again to keep family in check—no, not today, no, this is not the help I need, yes, I understand your concern, but I know what is best for me and this is what I will be doing, no, I do not need your help in this way, yes, I will let you know if I need anything.

Cancer was horrible, but it was also horribly freeing. I couldn’t care less about protecting anyone else’s feelings while establishing my guardrails. I knew that if I didn’t do it then, it would cost me more than my voice. It would cost me my life.

And so I repeated it over and over again. No. No. No.

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And then, somewhere along the way, I got over the worst of the cancer treatment and started the onerous journey of living with chronic pain and... well, just living. I threw myself into work, into my side projects, into my big project with my husband, into everything that I could get my hands on.

Illness robs you of time, and when you’re presented with what feels like a détente of a season, you jump straight in, you dive headfirst into everything life has to offer, and you eat, ravenously. You grab, and take, and hold, and stuff, because who knows when it’s going to get ripped away from you?

The thing about operating on the other side, presenting as normal when you’re feeling anything but, is that you get very good at making people forget. You put on a lot of bluster. You carry yourself with some weird swag that is also strangely defensive because you don’t want anyone coming too close to see the pain you still carry. You go everywhere, and do everything, and spin like a tornado to life. You lap up the praise—wow, you’re amazing, I don’t know how you live like this.

The thing about people forgetting, as well, is that they begin to play out the patterns they’re used to with you.

Chronic takers begin to present themselves and take and take and take. Chronic do-gooders come to you and offer help over and over again in a million different ways. Chronic narcs begin to make everything about you, about them.

All these people, in their own ways, in chronic pain.

The little voice inside you is whimpering.

You’re tired, it says. You are tired.

But you don’t want to listen to it. Because you’re falling into your old patterns. You’re playing into your old roles of wanting to keep everyone happy, of tying yourself up in knots with your yeses, of being powerless, of being afraid to draw boundaries.

So you bark at the little voice. Not now. NOT NOW.

And you continue spinning. You spin and spin and spin like a whirling dervish dancer until one day, you trip over your own feet and find yourself crashing to the floor, out of breath, utterly unhappy with yourself and with everyone around you.

The little voice is also silent. It doesn’t say, I told you so. You don’t need it to. You know.

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It is my birthday in six days.

For as long as I can remember, January has always been my favorite month. Something about its newness, something about my birthday makes it feel particularly magical for me. My husband’s birthday is also in January—we are thirteen days apart, and it has always felt like a month-long celebration of gift-giving and cheering. There is nothing quite like the birthday month.

This year, it is different.

I am exhausted beyond belief. My mental health has been ground to dust with all the changes that 2024 brought with it. I feel disconnected from my body and I am in pain—my swollen throat, my aching joints, and the headaches that take me out for hours.

There is also the low thrum of anxiety because this year, January also means big scans. It means mammograms. It means possibly MRIs or PET scans or whatever else the medical team thinks is necessary. It means a change in medical protocol and more frequent doctor visits. It means needles and waiting rooms and hospital gowns. It means horrible stretches of time wondering, wondering, whether something untoward is going to happen.

It is difficult to talk about this to everyone who wants to celebrate with you. This is the old pattern playing out, the one where I often, and continually, consider the feelings and needs of others before my own. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a commendable trait. It’s why I’ve carefully nurtured it for all of my life.

But it’s a trait that, too, has to be moderated. There is no other without the self (and... I suppose the converse is true, there is no self without the other—we are creatures of communities and villages). There is no filling anyone else’s cup when yours is constantly in drought.

But this is a lesson hard-won for most women. Because women are taught, from a young age, that our worth only comes from how well we perform the roles in our lives—daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, sister, mother.

Do you remember when the last time a girl was venerated for just being herself, without hopes and dreams piled on her, without expectations of what she could achieve, of what she would represent in her family?

When was the last time you were happy just because you were you, without having to satisfy someone else’s expectations of you?

Questions, questions.

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I am still in pain. The swelling in my neck has come down, though the rest of me is still stiff and aching. In a few days, I will be seeing my oncologist to get my shots. I will have my ovaries shut down, I will have blood drawn, and I will make appointments for my scans and tests.

I will, inevitably, sit and reckon with my mortality and stray down the path of what-ifs.

I will think about what it means to experience another orbit around the sun and give thanks that I have made it thus far.

I will yell and shout at the universe for making this my journey, and then I will sob and cry and shriek and laugh.

I will let my voice sing, even if only for myself.

I will yell, loudly, NO. NO. NO.

And when I am ready, I will emerge again.