What Remains

What Remains

Chronic illness taught me a strange kind of waiting.

Not the kind with a clear end—no countdown, no cure, no guarantees.

Just suspended time.

Stuck between not quite dying, and not really living.

In the beginning, I clung to hope like a lifeline.

Every new specialist, treatment, or medication dangled the possibility of return.

Return to work.

To the rhythm of productivity. To being someone others could count on.

To contributing, providing, solving problems—signing forms, showing up, holding it all together.

Return to parenting the way I used to.

Not just watching from the sidelines, but jumping in.

The rides, the games, the last-minute school projects.

The warmth of being the one who made it all happen, even when no one noticed.

Return to being a sister who remembered birthdays and showed up for the hard stuff.

Return to neighborly conversations in driveways, a casserole on someone’s porch,

a hand extended before it had to be asked for.

I kept reaching outward—toward connection, toward usefulness,
trying to reclaim the roles that once defined me.

But eventually, the reaching wore thin.
Not for lack of love, but because my energy could no longer stretch that far.

And so, I returned to myself, alone.

Return to the self I recognized—the one who moved through the world with energy and purpose.

The one who didn’t always have to explain, or apologize, or measure the cost of each small task.

But return didn’t come.

Days passed, then months.

Each one carried a new promise—a referral, a medication, a test result—

and each one let it quietly slip away.

I marked time in appointments and side effects, in what I could no longer do.

The world moved on around me, full of forward motion and milestones.

I stayed still.

Not by choice, but by necessity.

At first, I thought it was temporary. A detour.

But detours eventually rejoin the road.

This… didn’t.

Years began to stack.

Holidays repeated themselves, indistinct.

Friends grew older, children taller, careers evolved.

My life was smaller now, quieter.

But not empty.

The hope I’d carried so fiercely became a quiet ache,

like background music I could no longer turn off.

Eventually, it settled into something else: presence.

I learned how to live inside a day instead of pushing through it.

I noticed things—really noticed them.

The way morning light filtered through the curtains.

The feeling of a warm mug in a cold hand.

A bird returning to the same branch, like clockwork.

It didn’t erase the pain, but it gave it context.

I stopped waiting for life to restart and began collecting it in pieces.

A good book.

A soft blanket.

A text from someone who remembered I was still here.

This wasn’t the life I planned.

But it became the life I honored.

What remains is not the noise or speed or achievement.

What remains is stillness.

Awareness.

The way resilience carves a quiet strength you never knew you had—

until that strength is all you have.

What remains is me—different, quieter, but still here.