For the past week, I’ve had a meltdown every single day at 6:00 pm.
It’s not just around six or sometime in the evening. It’s six o’clock, almost exactly, as if my body set an alarm I never wanted. Some nights, it passes in twenty minutes if I can pull myself out of it. Other nights, it sticks around for hours, leading to a kind of emotional exhaustion that feels out of proportion—until I remember that nothing about this is really proportionate anymore.
It usually starts the same way. I’m fine, or at least managing in the way that counts as fine after cancer. I get through the day, answer emails, and do what I’m supposed to. Then, suddenly, something changes.
Things I say to my husband like clockwork at 6:00 pm:
✔️ Ughhhh why do I feel so sickkk
✔️ I don’t feel good
✔️ Why the hell do I feel like this
✔️ I am miserabblleeeeeeee
✔️ Here comes another breakdown
✔️ But what if I feel like this forever
✔️ Is this normal??
✔️ Do I look pale? Be honest
✔️ I swear something is wrong with me
✔️ No no don’t Google it… actually wait, Google it
✔️ Why does 6pm hit me like a truck every day
✔️ I was literally fine 20 minutes ago??
✔️ I think I need to lie down immediately
✔️ Don’t talk to me… but also don’t leave me
✔️ If I fall asleep here just let me go
✔️ Ok but seriously should I call my doctor
It’s almost funny when you see it written out like that. Almost.
Because in the moment, there’s nothing exaggerated about it. The nausea feels real. The fatigue feels real. The sudden drop, the sense that something is off, that something is wrong, that maybe this is the time it isn’t just a passing feeling, feels very, very real.
A fellow breastie asked me the other day, “Do you find it hard sometimes to think positively?”
And I didn’t hesitate.
Yes.
Not because I’m not grateful. I am deeply. I know there are so many women who pray to be in the position I’m in, who never get to hear the words I’ve heard, who don’t get this version of time. I carry that with me every single day.
But gratitude doesn’t cancel out reality.
It doesn’t change the fact that we live every day with a terminal, chronic illness. It doesn’t quiet the thoughts that show up uninvited and stay too long. It doesn’t make the fear go away just because things look stable on paper.
Those thoughts don’t go away.
More often than not, they are front and center. Sometimes they sit quietly in the background while I move through my day. Other times, like at 6:00 pm, they take over the entire room.
It’s the medications we take every day. The treatments keep things under control, but they come with their own costs. The fatigue isn’t just normal tiredness. It’s the kind of exhaustion that comes from your body always working to keep things steady.
It’s the mental load of knowing that stability isn’t the same as being done.
And on top of all of that, we are still expected to show up.
We have to work, function, and keep things moving. The reality is, we need income, insurance, and access to the treatments that keep us here. There’s no option to step away and just exist in the experience.
So we do both.
We live in this reality and perform normalcy at the same time.
And then, at 6:00 pm, the performance cracks a little.
That’s what it feels like most of all. It’s not weakness or failure. It’s just the moment when holding everything together gets too heavy for too long.
Some nights, I catch it early. I talk myself through it, remind myself it’s happened before, it passes, and my body is doing something I don’t fully understand but now recognize. Other nights, I let it happen, because fighting it only makes it worse.
And eventually, it shifts.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. But enough.
Later in the evening, I start to feel like myself again. The intensity fades, the thoughts quiet down a bit, and I’m left feeling drained, a little confused, but also aware of something important.
I made it through it. Again.
That doesn’t make it easier the next day. It doesn’t mean I won’t be back in it at 6:00 pm tomorrow. But it does mean that even in the hardest moments, there is an endpoint, even if I can’t see it when I’m in the middle of it.
This is a part of the story that doesn’t always get told.
The in-between hours. The unexpected downward turns. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s so hard to stay positive, even when you know how lucky you are to be here, there’s nothing wrong with you; you’re just living something that doesn’t have clear edges or easy answers.
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