What I’m leaving behind in 2024.
Cancer in your 20s - is dating advice that important?
After a year of cancer, cancer and more cancer, there is a lot I’d like to leave in 2024. However, after ending the year and going through the worst heartbreak I’ve experienced, I want to leave behind lifestyle and dating columnists. We have Dolly Alderton and Eliza Day, the Pioneers of Lifestyle, and advice columns. Leave it to them.
I am over it after spending years reading non-fiction self-help books, love and romance books, dating and witty lifestyle columns. There are only so many times you can read the same story about someone getting back with their ex, the “crazy” one-night stand that really…is not that crazy or the advice to “not get back with him/her”. There is nothing we haven’t all heard or done. Let’s be real; we will go back again and again. We will probably sleep with someone who we regret in the morning, or maybe you won’t if you’re one of the lucky ones. You may go to a psychic once or thrice for relationship advice, only to not follow it or ensure you follow every step. The columns need to be left in 2024, and instead, I need someone to tell me how to live with the harrowing feeling of hopelessness after surviving cancer at 20 and 24.
It's 2025, and still, I rarely see young health columnists writing about living with cancer or rare genetic disorders that interrupted their studies, travel plans, marriage, etc. I am a cancer survivor, I am a brain tumour survivor, but where the hell do I go from here? I don’t want to be told not to return to my ex or “SLEEP WITH THE GUY”. I want to be told the cancer won’t return, or if it does, it will be ok. I want to be told I’m not the only 24-year-old whose life has been turned upside down. Whenever I try to envision a future, I can’t; it’s like staring into a void. All I see is a blank wall and a doctor. I should be thrilled that I have a third, even fourth chance at life, but I can’t force that happiness because I am scared. I studied for my degree through a brain tumour, I got my master’s degree with cancer, and I started an NCTJ, but my cancer came back. Now I’m ready to return to ‘normality’, but I don’t know what that is anymore, and every time I look for advice, I’m met with witty lifestyle and dating advice. That is not the only trial and tribulation 20+ year-olds are met with.
As I mentioned, I write this with a broken heart, but illness doesn’t wait for a broken heart. Illness doesn’t wait for Christmas, birthdays, broken hearts, weddings, babies. It waits for nothing, and that’s why you’re not told in your 20s. You’re told not to get back with your ex, you’re told to sleep with the guy, you’re told how young you are, to cherish girlhood, to make silly mistakes, but you’re not told what to do when you get poorly. You’re then left. Do I still sleep with the guy? What about the girl? Do I stay in my room or go to the club every night? It doesn’t matter, right? Have I made the right career decision? Is time running out? Is 24 young or old? I don’t know. Is this grief, or am I going insane?
2025 is the year we need more discourse and focus on being in our 20s, and it is not going to “plan.” We must stop putting time stamps on decades of our lives and free ourselves from thinking about the ‘eras’ of life. Cancer taught me that dating and relationship advice is really the last thing you need advice on in your 20s, trust me.