“I don’t wanna do this.” I repeat this phrase to myself over and over again, as the warm water from the show cascades over my body.

I stare blankly at the wall and wish I could just go back to bed. It’s too early for this. I’m already not a morning person, but these treatments make me even less eager to get out of bed.

Eventually I pull myself from the warm shower and crawl back into bed for some temporary comfort, wrapping myself in my blankets but careful not to lay back down or close my eyes. I scroll through Facebook while I warm up enough to get out of bed for the second time. I eat a quick breakfast, usually just an apple, before throwing on some leggings and a long t-shirt. I almost forget to grab a scarf or hat to cover my nearly hairless head, but a quick glimpse in the mirror reminds me. I don’t want people knowing I’m sick. I just want to blend in with everyone else.

I just want to feel normal.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I told myself that I wouldn’t become one of those people who only talked about my illness. In fact, I told people I didn’t want to talk about it at all. My life isn’t just cancer, and I want it to be a blip - some minor annoyance that happened in the background of my life - not something that would define me.

However, it didn’t take long for me to realize why people with chronic illness talk about it a lot. Because before long, it consumes your life, becoming the only thing you can talk about because it’s connected to almost everything you do.

I had to plan my life around chemo appointments, remembering that I might feel fine right after, but by the third day after the treatment, I would be exhausted in a way that most people will never understand.

Now I'm doing radiation. Every day, five days a week, with only weekends off. My center keeps scheduling me for 7:40 in the morning. I have a taxi that takes me to my appointments everyday - a luxury I didn’t have with chemo because I never set it up. But it’s still 45 minutes to an hour each way. So we leave around 6:40. I’m a freelance writer for a reason, I like to make my own hours. I haven’t had to be up that early every day in years, and I would prefer to keep it that way.

My husband and I are usually up until 2-3 am. And for some reason, my cat seems to know when I have to be up early - he thinks he needs to make sure I don’t sleep through my alarm by waking me up every fifteen minutes for the few hours I do get to sleep.

But everyday, I get into the taxi with the kind Greek man driving me. Some days we talk about his French wife and what brought me to France. Some days I’m still half asleep and can barely mutter a “Bonjour” before scrolling through Facebook on the ride to the clinic.

Radiation itself is very quick. It takes longer to get undressed and get into position than it does for them to zap my breast. I just lay there topless in front of a room full of strangers with their hands all over me, trying to get me in the exact position I was the day before. I lay there with my hands in stirrups over my head and stare at the ceiling, thinking, “I don’t wanna do this.”

But then it’s over. The machine does it’s job, hopefully killing any lingering cancer cells that might have been left behind after surgery. I head back out to the taxi for the drive home. I’m home before my husband wakes up for work.

It’s pretty easy compared to chemo. but I’ve been told it only gets harder. I can expect to burn. I can expect more exhaustion that lingers for months after I finish treatment. My body is likely to change in ways that I won’t like.

I don’t wanna do this.

But I have to.

This is my life for the next five and a half weeks.

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