Dating After Cancer Was Way Less Fun Than I’d Planned

This story was originally published on the now-defunct XOJane.com on Jan. 12, 2014. It’s been lightly edited and mentally noted that I would’ve written some things very differently years later. But for posterity’s sake!

I harbor a not-so-secret wish that I’ll meet my future ex-husband offline. We’ll be avoiding the mosh pit at a pop-punk concert or on a supermarket check-out line. It’ll be love at first sight, confirmed by a mumbled joke about how emo isn’t dead we’re seeing or the bag of carrots one of us just dropped. We’ll swap numbers and hit it off on a seamless first date that involves bread baskets, dim lighting, and stories about our families and jobs and hopes and dreams. Fireworks will go off at the end of the date (real ones, obviously) and the rest will be history.

What I’m telling you is that despite being a girl who drinks beer, watches football, and has more guy friends than girls, I want to star in a rom-com. I dream of an uncomplicated love story because recently, my life story has been nothing but complicated.

In May 2012, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I was 27. The news came just over one year after moving from New Jersey to California. My family and best friends, the main prongs of a cancer support system, were back East. What I had in my new hometown of Los Angeles was a good group of friends, an ex, and a handful of co-workers. Almost all of these L.A. people were new to my life, but I relied heavily on them, especially the ex. It was much easier to fall back on the people who were there before I was sick and bald than to explain to strangers why I was sick and bald.

But somewhere between being declared in remission in April 2013 and my hair slowly but surely making its a sparse comeback, I realized I couldn’t rely on old relationships that didn’t work. It wasn’t healthy, and I already had enough health battles going on. Besides, going on dates helps you forget about your past and just have fun in the moment, right?

Right?

Well, that’s what I told myself when I made a profile on a free online dating site that I’d rather not name for my own sanity.

I wanted to feel normal again, to date like any other “normal” twentysomething, which in career-focused, car-reliant Los Angeles means online dating. I figured at worst, I’d fish through weird and creepy messages. At best, I’d meet cute boys who (hopefully) looked like football players and come away with good stories to share after bad dates.

Over the course of four months, this social experiment resulted in ignoring 93% of the creepy or downright stupid messages, responding to about 12 guys who seemed normal, and going on dates with five of them.

I wasn’t going to hide the fact that I had recently been a cancer patient from those five guys, but I wasn’t going to mention it for no reason either. Sure it’s a big secret, but no one shares their entire life story on a first date. That reveal is a huge reason why cancer kids like myself are scared to date: Which date is the right date to tell someone new that you had cancer? When is it right to start dating at all? Are we different to date than other young adults?

I told some of the guys and never mentioned it to others — it depended on either how I felt in the moment or if I was wearing a low-cut shirt that couldn’t hide my biopsy scar. I should have thought about that more when getting dressed each time…

Regardless, the five outings fared like this:

First was Tattooed Metal Fan. He could talk for hours on the phone, and the topic of cancer came up during a chatty pre-first date call. He offered to shave his head in solidarity, which freaked me out. I didn’t want someone I knew to shave their head, let alone some dude I couldn’t pick out of a lineup. In-person, we ended up having zero chemistry.

Next was Stage Five Clinger. Before we even met, he would send me panicked messages if I didn’t respond to his texts right away. On our first date, we had just started talking about how he hated all things Hollywood when he noticed my scar. I explained it, my diagnosis, and my now in-remission status, and that was that. I didn’t expect to tell him, but when someone asks a direct question, it’s just rude not to answer. At the end of the date, SFC asked me if I wanted to go out again. He was negative about everything, but I thought, “Why not? He looks like a football player! And he doesn’t care that I had cancer!” We texted for another week, and then SCF went MIA. I sort of wish I had disappeared first.

Then came Frat Boy Writer, who was down to play bingo at a neighborhood bar for our first date. We talked writing, sports, and our families, drank a few beers, and he walked me home. For the second date, we bar hopped. It was a very classy courting. At the last dive, FBW slurred, “Do you know how I know a girl’s a keeper? If I sleep with her and still want to hang out the next day.” You know how I know a guy’s a keeper? If he doesn’t say that. FBW wasn’t told about the cancer.

I almost felt bad for FBW’s super nice follow-up, Comic Fan. CF was kind and old-fashioned, picking me up before our date. He took me out in Hollywood, where we awkwardly played darts and realized that we had nothing to say to each other. When he dropped me off at the end of the night, I ran out of his car to avoid a first date kiss or talk of a second date. Mean and presumptive? Probably, but if avoiding awkward situations is wrong, then I’m cool with being both. I would have had to use words to tell CF about the cancer.

The fifth one, Southern Joker, was promising. We never ran out of topics to talk about on our first date. He noticed the scar, leading to one more first date cancer revelation under my belt, but unlike with SFC, this reveal didn’t feel forced or wrong. We ended up seeing each other almost every day and making future plans. All of our dates were fun, but I felt like something was slightly off. We would also joke around a lot, probably more so than having deep conversations, and with each friendly jab, I realized I had become a more sensitive person overall after dealing with cancer. I couldn’t change that, and I found myself pushing him away before anything serious could begin.

All of this added up to my cancer realization: We’ve got a lot of baggage that most people our age can’t understand — and they shouldn’t.

I tried to ignore that because I thought I wanted to start dating again. I really did. But as hard as I tried, I wasn’t a normal twentysomething. What I was, am, and always will be is a young cancer survivor. The scars showed, from the literal biopsy scar on my chest to the many mental scars. I was hyper-sensitive about my hair. I wore wigs for the first year, including on the first few dates, and then extensions for the next six months, and both made me feel like a lying fraud who could be exposed at any time. The word cancer seemed to follow me everywhere, in commercials, on billboards, during conversations. Regular check-ups told me I was healthy, but I rarely felt it when I hit lows of crying over nothing or staying in bed for days. I kept up relationships with exes and friends who didn’t deserve my attention and ignored the ones who did because I had no idea how to handle meaningful relationships during and treatment.

Somewhere between the bad dates and the decent dates and the exes and the tears that had nothing to do with any of these boys, I realized that I didn’t really want to date. I thought I did. I always liked being in a relationship, craved it really, but now, I didn’t want to check in with anyone or play games or not be selfish. I had very real concerns about my physical and mental health that had to take the forefront in a very new way.

I’m sure these feelings won’t last forever. If someone amazing comes along, I’d happily give them a chance and hope they’d give me one too. But for now, I have to live with this new reality: I had cancer. I don’t want that to define all of me, but it has to define at least a piece of me. It will always be something I fought and fear — I can never be the person I was before my diagnosis, and there is always the possibility of recurrence. That’s a lot to comprehend for myself, let alone for someone else to.

Trying to date after cancer has felt like walking through a maze covered in shattered glass, so what am I missing out by taking a little break from the madness? A few decent stories to tell at happy hour? There will be more when I’m ready to tackle the dating world again.

Now pardon me while I go update my profile… on line at the supermarket.