The game wasn’t good. The team lost in four uninspiring sets. My girlfriend drove out of the gym before the crowd even cleared. The ride home was two teenagers debriefing a frustrating loss while managing homework and schedules and the ten other things that permanently live inside a high schooler’s head.
I was in the middle of all of it.
And it was one of the best nights I’ve had in a long time.
Here’s what I’ve figured out — and I’m still learning it — the moments that actually matter aren’t the ones you plan for. They’re not the milestone conversations or the highlight-reel evenings you’d caption on Instagram. They’re the ride home after a rough loss. The tired person sitting next to you who almost apologizes for not being more “on.” The kitchen that needs cleaning at 9:30 PM when everyone’s running out of gas.
That’s where the real stuff lives.
After cancer, I had this distorted idea of what “showing up” meant. I thought it meant energy. Performance. Justifying my presence in a room by having something to offer — a story, a joke, a plan. Like I had to earn my spot in someone’s good night.
My dog Brutus corrected that thinking before I even knew I had it.
Brutus didn’t know I had cancer. He didn’t know I was rebuilding. He knew I was there. At 2 AM when I couldn’t sleep. On the couch when everything felt sideways. On a walk when I had nothing left to say to anyone, including myself. He didn’t need the performance. He needed the presence.
That’s what I missed for a long time in my relationships. I’d show up at the end of things — to exhausted versions of people who’d already processed the important parts without me. I’d hear about the game three days later, the emotional charge already drained out of it.
I was there for the highlights. I was missing the actual life.
The night after the volleyball loss was different.
I was there for the frustration in real time. I saw it happen. I felt the energy shift in the car on the way home. I was in the kitchen when dinner got made. I was there when the night wound down the way real nights wind down — not with a bow on it, just with everyone finally tired enough to stop.
She almost apologized to me the next morning for not being more “on” that night.
I told her I don’t want the performance version. I want to be in the unglamorous parts. The ones that don’t make it to the recap. The ones where you’re too tired to be anything other than exactly who you are.
Because that’s where you actually know someone.
Here’s the thing about survival — cancer, or anything that breaks you open — it teaches you to be grateful for the big moments. The all-clears. The reunions. The days when everything lands right.
But if you’re not careful, you get stuck chasing those peaks. You start measuring your life by the highlights and calling the rest filler.
The rest isn’t filler. The rest is most of it.
The Tuesday nights. The tired rides home. The kitchen at 9:30. The person who almost apologizes for being human in front of you. Those are the moments where you find out if you actually belong somewhere. If you can just be there — no performance, no agenda, no earning your spot — and have it be enough.
I’m learning that it is.
I’m learning that being embedded in someone’s regular life — the unglamorous, unremarkable, non-highlight-reel version — is the thing I was actually looking for all along.
If you’re in a hard stretch right now, here’s what I want you to hear:
The goal isn’t to get to the good nights. The goal is to be present for all of them — the ones that land and the ones that don’t. The ones where you have something to offer and the ones where all you have is the fact that you showed up.
Showing up is enough. More than enough.
The unremarkable nights add up to something remarkable. I promise.
Just. Keep. Moving.