Suleika Jaouad

All that chemo had taken a permanent physical toll on my body.

I wondered what kind of job can I hold when I need to nap for four hours in the middle of the day, when my misfiring immune system still sends me to the ER on a regular basis.

And then there were the invisible, psychological imprints my illness had left behind.

The fears of relapse, the unprocessed grief, the demons of PTSD that descended upon me for days, sometimes weeks.

See, we talk about reentry in the context of war and incarceration, but we don't talk about it as much in the context of other kinds of traumatic experiences, like an illness.

Because no one had warned me of the challenges of reentry, I thought something must be wrong with me.

I felt ashamed.

And with great guilt, I kept reminding myself of how lucky I was to be alive at all when so many people like my friend Melissa were not.

But on most days, I woke up feeling so sad and lost, I could barely breathe.

Sometimes, I even fantasized about getting sick again.

And let me tell you, there are so many better things to fantasize about when you're in your 20s and recently single.

But I miss the hospital's ecosystem.

Like me, everyone in there was broken.

But out here, among the living, I felt like an imposter, overwhelmed and unable to function.

I also missed the sense of clarity I'd felt at my sickest.

Staring your mortality straight in the eye has a way of simplifying things, of rerouting your focus to what really matters.

And when I was sick, I vowed that if I survived, it had to be for something.

It had to be to live a good life, an adventurous life, a meaningful one.

But the question, once I was cured, became, how?

I was 27 years old, with no job, no partner, no structure.