Prompt 285. The Best-Laid Plans

& Lia Romeo on seeing things from a new perspective

College graduation, 2010, in my plan-making heyday

Hi friend,

Last week, in our workshop with Susan Cain, she read a passage from my memoir Between Two Kingdoms, where I answered a question posed by my friend Quintin Jones (Lil’ GQ in the book). Of my diagnosis, he had asked, “If you could take it all back, would you?”

The answer I arrived at was this: “The tangling of so much cruelty and beauty has made of my life a strange, discordant landscape. It has left me with an awareness that haunts the edges of my vision—it can all be lost in a moment—but it’s also given me a jeweler’s eye. If I’m thinking about my illness—abstracted from its impact on the people around me—then the answer is: No, I would not reverse my diagnosis, if I could. I would not take back what I suffered to gain this.”

Susan paused after she finished reading, then said, “Do you still mean that? Would you not take it back?”

I understand the skepticism. A month into my diagnosis, or even a year in, I wouldn’t have believed it. In fact, if you’d told me that one day I’d say, “I would not reverse my diagnosis,” I would’ve probably wanted to punch you in the face. When you’re in the trenches of something brutal, reversing course is all you want, and back then, all I wanted was to be a normal, healthy 22-year-old. But there’s a tremendous amount of power in accepting reality. Rather than fighting your circumstance, rather than wallowing in sorrow and anger, you can begin to see it as an invitation. You can begin to interrogate it, to watch new and unexpected things emerge.

And honestly, the unexpected things that emerged for me were countless and invaluable—from the learning and growth I experienced to the love that came from that hardest of passages. Before my diagnosis, I was always thinking of the future and making a plan for how I’d get to where I wanted to go. There is value in having a plan, and gunning toward it as bravely and brazenly as you can. But it’s also important to acknowledge that life often does not go according to plan. My diagnosis forced me to pause, to be present, to meet myself in the now, rather than some aspirational version I was constantly chasing after. It forced me to figure out what truly nourished me, which of course was not a reinvention of the wheel, but a return to the things that had always nourished me—like time with loved ones, like writing.

If it weren’t for my illness, I wouldn’t have had the deep conversations that can only take place when all the artifice is stripped away, when you are your most laid-bare, vulnerable self. I would have been charging forward, chasing some elusive, epic, mountain-top experiences, rather than relishing the small joys that surround us every day. Illness humbled and grounded me. It taught me all my most important lessons—about acceptance, about presence, about love—that I would never wish to unknow. 

And yet, that process can be messy, and it’s ongoing, which today’s contributor, the writer Lia Romeo, shows us. In her essay “At the Circus,” she grapples with a new diagnosis, capturing the way it disorients you, how it forces you into different, sometimes uncomfortable perspectives—but also how it allows you to see the world in a way as never before. It’s truly stunning, so please, read on.

Sending love, 

Suleika

Some items of note—

• As I mentioned, I had the honor of hosting a workshop with Susan Cain last week, and I have to say, it was the most nourishing way to spend a Sunday afternoon. As one community member commented, “I was deeply touched and moved by this. So much wisdom, love, and support.” If that feels like a joyous way to spend an hour, you can find it here!

• Speaking of joys, each Friday in our Isolation Journals Chat we share a small joy from the week that we want to hold onto. This week I wrote about saying yes to the things that scare me and actually having a good time doing it. To be buoyed by this chorus of collective gratitude and to add yours too, click here!

• Mark your calendar! We’ve scheduled our next meeting of the Hatch, our virtual creative hour for paid subscribers, on Sunday, March 17th from 1-2 pm ET. It’s such a special time—I hope you can join us!

Georges Seurat, Le Cirque (1891)

Prompt 285. At the Circus by Lia Romeo

I never realized how many people there are in the world who don’t have cancer. I go to the grocery store and it’s full of people who don’t have cancer, putting kale and corn flakes and popsicles into their carts. I open my Instagram feed and it shows my friends drinking beer in Austin and baijiu in Shanghai and not having cancer. I took my son to New York City recently to see the circus, and marveled at the crowds of people who didn’t have cancer emerging from the subway and walking briskly across the street.

Of course some of those people probably did have cancer and I didn’t know it. Some of them probably had cancer and they didn’t know it. Until a few weeks ago, I was one of those people. I had a clear mammogram last year, but mammograms don’t pick up everything. What’s inside me has probably been growing for longer than that.

I’ve always considered myself a basically lucky person. In a lot of ways, I still do. I’m lucky to have health insurance. To have excellent doctors. To have a husband who’s stepped up to take care of me, though we were separated before I got diagnosed. As Friar Laurence says to Romeo, “a pack of blessings light upon thy back.” But still. Before cancer I felt like I had a basically easy, happy life. And now I don’t, and I miss that feeling. And a lot of people lose it sooner than I did, and a lot of people never have it in the first place. There are worlds of things that are worse than this. (But still. But still.)

My mom has suffered from severe, constant pain for the past eight years. On a good day, her pain is a 7.5; on a bad day, it’s more like a 9. It’s in her right leg, a part of her body that doesn’t exist anymore; the doctors amputated it six years ago hoping the pain would stop. It didn’t. She’s tried ketamine and psychedelics, physical therapy, acupuncture and spinal cord stimulators. She’s had electrodes implanted in her brain.

As the granddaughter of ranchers, my mom has always had a “buck up and deal with it” attitude. But since the pain descended, she’s become allergic to hearing other people complain. My husband and I lived with my parents during the pandemic, trying to manage demanding jobs and a two-year-old with no childcare. We were struggling. She didn’t want to hear it. We could take walks. We could sit without hurting. We could go for hours, even days, thinking very little about our bodies. Yes, we were trapped at home, reading Go Dog, Go for the two hundredth (two thousandth?) time, but we were so, so lucky.

I resented this at the time. I was her child, and she couldn’t see—or didn’t care—that I was unhappy. But now I listen to one friend tell me about her husband’s broken ankle, another friend talk about the dinner date who never showed up, another friend tell me about her dog eating a sock and costing her thousands of dollars in vet bills. I love my friends, but I also hate them a little. I want so much to go back to worrying about these kinds of things.

I took my son to the circus because I figured he’d love it. But in fact, I was the one who ended up being enthralled. He’s four, and it’s possible he assumes that all grown-ups can juggle three parasols with their feet and do backflips on a high wire. He doesn’t yet understand that the body has limits, that the body can suddenly, silently turn against you. I hope he doesn’t understand this for a long time.

We watched the acrobats, jugglers, and clowns for two hours, me amazed, him wiggling, and then it was time for the final act. It was surprisingly simple. A man came out to the middle of the ring and began blowing bubbles. A woman sang a Spanish love song as the bubbles floated up towards the top of the tent. They shimmered red and blue in the circus lights. They might have been the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. And then one by one they began to pop— pop— pop until they were gone, and the show was over.

Your prompt for the week:

Write about a time when a change in your own circumstance gave you a new perspective. When you came to understand something you had previously misunderstood.

If you’d like, you can post your response to today’s prompt in the comments section, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals. As a reminder, we love seeing your work inspired by the Isolation Journals, but to preserve this as a community space, we request no promotion of outside projects.

Today’s Contributor—

Lia Romeo is a playwright and novelist. She recently completed a playwriting fellowship at Juilliard, and she teaches in the M.A. program in creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her play Still, starring Jayne Atkinson and Tim Daly, will be produced off-Broadway starting in April.

photo by Kate Sterlin

If you’re new here—hi, I’m Suleika!

I’m the author of the memoir Between Two Kingdoms and the founder of the Isolation Journals, where we turn life’s interruptions into creative grist. Each Sunday, I send out this newsletter with an essay and journaling prompt from a guest contributor.

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