I was at sectionals last weekend when a kid came up and asked how I was doing.
His name is Skylar. He’s 16. He was born with half a heart — literally, half — and given months to live as a baby. Now he’s in high school, playing sports, living his life. His mom competes on the tennis circuit. I’ve known him from the courts for a while.
He asked how I was doing and I gave him a real answer. Not the highlight reel version, not the “I’m great, thanks for asking” deflection. I told him the truth:
“It’s not about the treatment anymore. Or even the disease. It’s about living with the fallout from those things. It’s no longer life threatening — and that gives me perspective.”
I mentioned a tooth that’s been giving me trouble. Something that would have wrecked me two years ago — the worry, the what-ifs, the spiral. Instead I told him: “I’m not in pain and I can still function. It’s an inconvenience. And because I can hold it that way, it doesn’t get to take from me.”
He nodded. He understood in a way most people don’t. Because he’s been holding his own version of that his entire life.
Here’s what I didn’t say to Skylar, but thought about later:
That kind of perspective is expensive. You don’t get it from a book or a podcast or someone else’s story. You get it from sitting in a waiting room wondering if a scan is going to change everything. You get it from treatment days that wipe out your whole week. You get it from rebuilding yourself from the inside out after your body tried to quit on you.
The perspective isn’t the prize. The fight was the price. The perspective is just what’s left when the smoke clears.
I hear from a lot of survivors who are frustrated — not because they’re sick anymore, but because the experience left them with something heavy they can’t quite name. The anxiety that shows up without warning. The way small inconveniences hit harder than they should. The sense that people around them don’t quite understand why certain things matter so much now.
That’s not a malfunction. That’s the cost of the ticket.
You paid for a perspective that most people never access. The difference between something being a crisis and an inconvenience — the ability to look at a broken tooth and think I can solve this instead of why does everything keep happening to me — that’s not accidental. That was purchased.
What you do with it is the question.
Skylar’s dad told me later that night that Skylar wouldn’t stop talking about me — my journey, who I am, the way I carry what I’ve been through. I was just talking to a kid. Being honest. Being present.
But that’s the thing about expensive perspective: it doesn’t stay in your pocket. When you use it — when you show up and give it freely without performing it — it lands somewhere in someone else and does work you never see.
That’s the return on what you paid.
If you’re in the middle of paying right now — I’m not going to tell you it’s worth it. That’s not something you can hear yet. What I will tell you is this: the people who come out the other side aren’t special. They’re just the ones who kept going long enough for the perspective to form.
Keep going long enough.
Just. Keep. Moving.