Exodus

There is no romantic way to pack up your life with a cancer diagnosis. No graceful way to decide what version of yourself makes the cut and what gets left behind. It’s triage. It’s survival. You throw away as much as you keep—not because it’s useless, but because the weight of it will crush you on the road.

It wasn’t the first time I’d packed like this.

The first time was after my mother’s suicide. I fled Minneapolis like someone leaving a burning house, grabbing whatever pieces of myself hadn’t yet turned to ash. Phoenix was the landing place then. Healing, I told myself. Reinvention. But really it was just running.

The second time, I ran from Arizona, this time quietly, without the theatrics of fire, when a tumor the size of a fist made its home inside me. I told myself Idaho would be the pause. The place I could catch my breath, recalibrate, fight. Instead, it became a lesson in how even the safe houses have cracks in the walls.

This was the third time.

Maybe not running, not exactly. More like being pushed. Pushed out of a house that was never mine. Pushed off the edge of a life I’d tried to build with someone who wanted all the comfort of my presence without the responsibility of my permanence.

This time, I didn’t cry as I folded my clothes. I didn’t linger over the books and kitchen utensils and small, sentimental things. I packed the way I imagine a prisoner does before release: fast, numb, aware that freedom costs something: even the quiet companionship of the animals I’d grown to love in Idaho. 

I didn’t get to say goodbye to Willow, the golden retriever who had long since disowned the brother she technically belonged to and glued herself to my side from the moment I arrived.  Leaving without a goodbye felt brutal in its ordinariness. No last pat. No chance to tell her she was good. But I did get a proper goodbye with Buddy. I found myself kneeling down to say goodbye to the Hunter’s cat. The friendliest piece of Idaho I’d met. He was sprawled out on the deck, sunbathing next to the poppies, stretching like nothing in the world was about to change. I reached out and brushed my hand over his fur. He didn’t move. Didn’t even bother to open his eyes. Just purred. 

And then there was Arley. My dog. My only constant. He wasn’t a dog in the way most people think of pets. He was my family. My lifeline when everything else was falling apart. As I packed the car, Arley wanted to jump in with me, his body pressed against the door, eyes wide with confusion and understanding. He knew. He knew exactly what was happening, even if I couldn’t say it aloud. I had to tell him no. His ears dropped, and for a moment, I could see it, the silent pain in his gaze, the way he knew I was leaving, but this time I wouldn't be coming back. I hugged him one last time, burying my face and my tears in his fur, and then placed him gently into his kennel, locking it with the kind of finality I hadn’t given myself. His soft whimper echoed in my mind as I closed the door, the last piece of me I couldn’t take with me.

The house was silent that morning, except for the sound of Arley’s pitiable murmurs and my totes dragging across the floor. I had already loaded them into the car when I remembered the post office key. I drove it down to the Swan Valley’s resident postmaster Linda, and she carefully slipped it into an envelope addressed to The Hunter. There was no note. Just the key, resting cold and indifferent like all the other pieces of me I was leaving behind.

I left at eleven o'clock. Still sleepy from the strawberry moon the night before. It was later than I planned my exodus, but a late start was better than no start, I reminded myself. I stopped at Swan Valley's General Store to fill up, picking up beef jerky and tea for provisions on the road. The air was thick with midday heat, the kind that clings to your skin and makes you feel sticky and weighed down. I was not fucking shimmering. I felt disgusting, even though I’d freshly showered. As the numbers ticked higher on the pump, I watched the reflection of my car windows, seeing only boxes stacked high and my own hollowed-out eyes staring back.

When I pulled out onto the highway, it wasn’t relief. It was something wilder. Like blood rushing back into a limb I thought I’d lost. I was alive again. And it scared me.

The Idaho Potato Museum was only an hour away in Blackfoot. I had promised myself for months that if things didn’t work out with The Hunter—if I had to leave Idaho—I would go. Even if it meant going alone. The night before, as we cleaned the house, he’d offered to take me. Too late. This wasn’t his pilgrimage to make.

I used to beg him to take me there. Half-joking, half-pleading. I told him it would be the perfect date because what could be more absurd than a monument to potatoes? Potatoes—my desert island food, my grandmother’s twice-baked mashed potatoes at every holiday, my guilty pleasure and my comfort. I’d even said once, if we ever get married, I want a potato bar at the reception.

But The Hunter never had time. There was always something more important. Like bugling at elk as if one would suddenly appear on the front porch.

So I went alone. Idaho’s version of Mecca, and mine alone to make.

The World Famous Idaho Potato Museum

The museum sat squat and brown against a cloudless sky, a massive russet potato sculpture parked out front like a punchline. I parked close this time—not because I didn’t want to walk, but because I was already carrying too much invisible weight.

Inside, it was quiet, almost too quiet, like the building itself knew it was ridiculous to take potatoes this seriously. Displays of farming equipment and laminated fun facts lined the walls. A wall of potato sack labels stretched on forever—red, yellow, green—each one a small proclamation of someone’s livelihood.

There was, of course, the famous Mr. Potato Head display. A wall of facts about how potato chips are one of the most eaten snacks in the world—billions of bags every year. Another about Thomas Jefferson serving French fries at the White House, like he’d invented them himself. Cases of Teton Glacier potato vodka and potato flakes from the 1950s—potato pearls and whipped potato mixes in packaging that looked like it had survived nuclear fallout. Even a whole section on strange potato utensils: mashers, ricers, and a lineup of antique peelers with wooden handles worn smooth by hands that probably did nothing but peel for decades.

I stood in front of a case with a single McDonald’s french fry, perfectly preserved since 1952, and for the first time since leaving Swan Valley, I started to cry. Quietly. The way you cry in public when you don’t want anyone to notice.

This would’ve been the perfect date. I could see us here, laughing at the absurdity of it all. Him, rolling his eyes but secretly charmed. Me, pretending not to notice his hand brushing mine as we stood too close in front of the World's Largest Potato Chip (25 inches long, uneaten since 1991).

But instead, it was just me. Alone in a museum dedicated to the food I loved most. The food I’d been avoiding. Because carbs are sugar. And sugar is what cancer feeds on.

In the café, I broke my lion’s diet fast. I ordered the silver dollar potatoes, and a basket of loaded homemade french fries. 

Life is short. And if I was going to leave Idaho, I’d leave full.

Every bite was sacred and sad, like a last supper shared with ghosts.

By the time I slid back into the driver’s seat, my hands still smelled faintly of salt and starch. I didn’t bother wiping them on a napkin. Let them smell. Let them carry proof that I had been there, that I had loved something in this state even if it hadn’t loved me back.

I started the car and didn’t look in the rearview mirror as I pulled away.

The miles stretched out in front of me like an old scar, healed but never quite right. One small town after another blinked by in the rearview mirror, each one a ghostly echo of Swan Valley—same sagging porches, same hand-painted signs flaking in the sun, same men hunched over gas pumps like their bodies had spent decades folding in on themselves.

I stopped in Poncha Springs because my bladder and my gas gauge demanded it, not because I wanted to linger. It was a town built for passing through. People with nowhere else to go servicing people who wished they were anywhere else.

At the pump beside me, a man stood curved into himself, his back warped not by genetics but by years of gravity and hard living. He spoke to the clerk through the open door, voice heavy with the slow drawl of someone who’d learned there was no need to hurry. He talked about the kittens he and his girlfriend were raising in their isolated cabin, about applying for a job at one of the stores because ICE had paid the little town a visit and then came the strikes and they’d need “scrubs” to break the line.

His words carried no hope. Just routine. Survival. Like he’d long since made peace with the narrowness of his life.

I stood there listening, feeling the cold pump handle in my hand, wondering what keeps people in places like this. Is it love? Family? The cost of a house with too many bedrooms and not enough light? Or is it just momentum—the way a body at rest stays at rest, even when the soul it contains wants to run?

Driving out of town, I couldn’t shake it. The smallness. The sameness. The thought that maybe depression is the unspoken currency of towns like these. I’d left Swan Valley with a tumor and a broken heart, but maybe I was lucky. Maybe running meant there was still a part of me convinced there was something better waiting.

I pressed my foot harder on the gas.

I braced for impact. I knew the Hunter would be returning home from work soon. He would have seen my dog kenneled. My “Dear John” letter folded neatly on the dinning room table. I had imagined his reaction a thousand different ways. A call. A text. Something with weight. With a sliver of the energy I had poured into saying goodbye to him.

Instead, my phone buzzed with a message so short, so carefully constructed it felt almost like a template.

“I will always love you as a friend and I want you to know you have a very special place in my heart and you are always welcome to come see Arley. We Love You!!! Best wishes to you, Rachel and I really mean that.”

I stared at the words, imagining him holding his phone to his lips, dictating the message the way he always did. That same flat monotone voice. No emotion. No hesitation.

The message didn’t bring peace. It didn’t soothe. It stung.

"I will always love you as a friend…”
I knew what he was doing. He was trying to soften the blow. To make leaving a woman with cancer and no savings feel somehow merciful. All while he moved forward with his new house. His new life. The one with certainty and walls and family—luxuries I would never have.

I was homeless. Alone.
And here was the man with both, telling me he “really meant” his best wishes.

It didn’t soften anything.

Thirty minutes after Hunter's message, his oldest daughter sent me a text. “Hey just wanted to check in on you. I have nothing against you. You’re an amazing person. Thanks for being so nice the time we spent together. The little man loves you.” 

It caught me off guard. I hadn’t left her a note. I’d left one for his parents, though they were clearly furious with me, and one for his youngest daughter. I'd spent hours with her, learning to saddle a horse and shoot a bow and arrow. But not the eldest. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought she was too far removed from me, or that she wouldn’t care either way.

I didn’t reply that night. My head was too full, my heart too raw. Two days later, I finally typed back:

“Aww, that means a lot. I’ve got nothing but love for you and the little man too. Sad I couldn’t say goodbye in person. Hope you both are doing great 💛.”

But in truth, I said more than that. I told her how much her message meant, how it made me feel seen in a way her father never had. I tried to explain the impossible math of leaving—not just a man, but his family, his children, the quiet rhythms of a small Idaho town I had tried so hard to make my own. It weighed heavy on me. I told her I hadn’t left because I stopped caring. I left because I needed more than he could give, and I couldn’t keep waiting for him to show up. I left because staying would’ve meant sacrificing the last pieces of myself I had left.

She wrote back not long after:

“If you need anything, let me know. I still like you as a person and wish my dad would have treated you better, but I’m sorry, this is how it always goes. As soon as I like somebody they leave, but I know how my dad is. I’m sorry for everything he put you through and all the mean stuff he said. You’re a great person. You’re a strong woman. I really did like you. I wish you the very best. If you ever need anything, let me know. Love ya.”

Her words broke me open. For the first time in a long time, I felt seen. Like I didn’t have to gaslight myself into believing The Hunter’s coldness somehow counted as a partnership. In the letter I’d left him, I’d apologized for not being the partner he needed me to be. But the truth was I had wanted an apology from him. For not showing up. For leaving me to carry everything alone. I had always had more skin in the game than he ever did.

And here was his daughter, apologizing for her grown father in a way he never would.

I was touched to my core, and chastised myself for not thinking she deserved a handwritten note too.

Grand Junction wasn’t supposed to feel so heavy.

The Hotel Melrose had seemed charming enough online, red brick, a whiff of history in the grainy photos, like it might hold old stories in its walls. But when I pulled up, the streets were empty in a way that wasn’t comforting, just unsettling. No valet. No parking lot. Just street spaces lined with shattered glass like confetti.

Somewhere down the street, a man’s scream cut the air, sharp as a nail dragged across metal. Another stumbled out of the bar across the street, his eyes glassy, his steps erratic, a predator’s stumble. He saw me and started to wave, his grin wide and wrong. A woman leaned against the doorway of a tattoo shop, smoking, her lipstick smudged like she’d been kissing strangers all night. She called something out too, but I didn’t catch it. I didn’t want to.

The weight of my car, packed with all that was left of my life, suddenly felt like a beacon. I could practically hear it whispering: cancer patient, single woman, alone.

That’s when my Asian friend Linda called.

It was uncanny, the timing. I hadn’t even texted her, hadn’t told her about the scream, the drunk man, the cigarette glow. Her voice cut through the static of my panic like a lighthouse.

“Where are you?” she asked, already knowing I wasn’t okay.

“The Melrose,” I said.

“Leave,” she said. “I’ll find you something better. Out of downtown. Somewhere safe.”

Minutes later, I was back in the car, driving through streets that felt like they wanted to swallow me whole. Linda texted me the address of a chain hotel near the highway. Not fancy, a place that felt like a scene from a Steinbeck novel, but with a real parking lot and locks that looked like they’d hold.

When I checked in, the clerk barely looked up. Just handed me a room key for room 204. The room was hot and musty. The bedspread was loud with a floral pattern, probably to disguise stains. I didn’t care. Beggars can’t be choosers. 

I didn’t unpack. I didn’t linger. I locked the door and set the latch, then curled up on the bed, still fully dressed, clutching my phone like it was a weapon and drifted off to sleep. 

*****

The next morning, the sun cracked open the sky, too bright, too fast. I hadn’t slept, not really. Only drifted in and out, my body coiled tight, waiting. I had cancer. Chronic fatigue. But I was still moving. Because I didn’t know how to stop.

I showered. Changed my clothes. And checked out. I wanted out of Grand Junction before the city woke up again.

By the time I hit the highway, my coffee was cold. I drove for hours through the kind of landscapes that looked like they hadn’t seen a new building in fifty years—gas stations that leaned sideways, diners with cracked windows, motels advertising “Color TV” like it was still a luxury.

The small towns blurred together. Each one felt like Swan Valley’s distant cousin. A little more dust. A little more rust. Same loneliness. Same air that clung heavy to the skin.

In the car, it was just me and the sound of my own breathing. Me and the quiet whisper of the voice I’d been trying to shut out: You’re alone. You’re sick. You’re running again.

When I crossed into Texas, the air shifted—warmer, heavier, like it was preparing me for Amarillo.

Linda texted: “How are you holding up?”
I didn’t answer right away.

Linda had graciously offered to pay for a hotel for the two nights of my exodus out of Swan Valley, Idaho to Winnsboro Texas where I had a couch and a friend I hadn’t seen in over a year. She booked me a room at the Extended Stay America and sent me a text confirmation.

But once I arrived at the Extended Stay America, things unraveled fast. This was supposed to be a safe stop. They were contracted with the American Cancer Society, a place for patients traveling for treatment. Linda had booked it for me straight from their website. Sent me the confirmation. And now they were telling me there was no room. Overbooked. The desk clerk didn’t even flinch as he said it, like I was asking for something unreasonable.

I called my friend Linda. No answer. She was probably asleep. I tried again. Nothing.

Panic coiled in my chest. I hadn’t slept in days. I had stage 3 rectal cancer. I told them as much, hoping it would spark some kind of humanity. It didn’t. I asked if they could transfer the reservation to another Extended Stay in the city, or anywhere else they partnered with. The clerk’s shrug told me everything.

Then the manager came out. She took one look at me and decided she was done. Her voice sharp, her tone full of disdain. No apology. No solutions. Just a wall. It was like my exhaustion, my illness, my desperation meant nothing. Like I was just another white woman with too many needs.

I didn’t yell. I didn’t curse. My voice stayed calm, steady, even as I felt my heart pounding like it was trying to claw its way out of my ribcage. But the manager’s tone didn’t match mine. She came out hot, loud, abrasive, every word dripping with contempt, like I’d walked into her lobby just to ruin her night.

All I wanted at that point was a simple confirmation. Proof that Linda’s reservation had been canceled. A receipt. Something in writing so Linda could fight it with her credit card company later. I asked once. Then again. The manager wouldn’t even look at me. She turned her back as I spoke, muttering under her breath, and then louder, until she was outright swearing at me in front of the clerk and another guest who had stopped pretending not to watch.

When I asked why I couldn’t get a cancellation receipt, she snapped, “You need to get out of my lobby before I call the police.”

I froze. 

“I’m not raising my voice,” I said, keeping my tone even. “I’m not being aggressive. I just want written confirmation of the cancellation. That’s all.”

She didn’t respond. She was already on the phone. I heard her give the address and say there was a “disruptive guest” refusing to leave.

“You’ll be escorted out as soon as they get here,” she told me, her words sharp and triumphant, like this was the win she’d been waiting for all night.

I stood there, gripping my phone in one hand and my bag in the other. My body felt like it was running on fumes and adrenaline, my head buzzing, my legs trembling under me. I was still calm, at least on the surface, but inside I was unraveling.

I pulled my phone out and hit record. Not to make a scene. Not because I wanted to. But because I couldn’t believe this was happening. Because no one would believe me if I tried to explain it later.

I left the Extended Stay lobby before the police arrived. My hands were shaking as I drove, my body humming with exhaustion and adrenaline. Linda finally called back. She was groggy, confused, apologizing over and over. She booked me a room at the EconoLodge down the road. It was all we could find at that hour.

The moment I walked in, I knew I wouldn’t sleep. The air carried mildew and cigarette smoke, the smell of a place that stopped trying. Stains bloomed across the carpet in irregular shapes. I didn’t bother undressing or peeling back the sheets. I didn’t trust what I’d find. The bathroom was worse. Tiles dulled with grime, a faint ring of something orange circling the drain. Mold growing from the baseboards. I didn’t even consider a shower.

I kept my shoes on. Sat on the edge of the bed, my bag still zipped tight in my lap. I told myself I’d leave at first light.

 *****

By sunrise, I was back on the road, heading east. The stretch from Amarillo to Winnsboro blurred by in long, flat miles. Past oil pumps nodding like tired old men. Rusted-out barns collapsing into fields of wild grass. Billboards promising Jesus, fireworks, and the best brisket in Texas—sometimes all in the same ad. Towns with names that sounded borrowed from somewhere else: Memphis, Paris, Bogata. Main streets lined with antique shops and barbershops, their neon signs flickering even in daylight.

I had been driving for hours when my phone buzzed with a message from my longtime friend and former boss, Preston. A video.

I hit play.

A group of shirtless men appeared on screen. One stepped forward, staring straight into the camera. “Raychel,” he said in a thick African accent, “I am a man. I am not your father. I love you.”

Another followed, holding up a bundle of cassava leaves. “I also love you.”

Then another: “Raychel, I love you too!”

And one more: “’Ello, I love you too.”

Finally, all five of them leaned toward the camera in perfect timing, shouting together: “We love you, Raychel!” They blew kisses and hollered before breaking into a round of dance to a reggae beat. Their red bandanas catching the wind and black track pants swishing as they moved.

I laughed so hard I startled myself, the sound bubbling up through my exhaustion like a geyser. Then I cried—fast, quiet tears sliding down my cheeks as my hands gripped the steering wheel.

Preston had known. He had known my deepest fear: to leave this world unloved, unclaimed. And somehow, impossibly, he had found a way to give me proof otherwise.

How did you even make this? I typed, wiping at my face.

His reply came quick. “Twenty dollars buys pretty much whatever you want in Africa.”

He’d paid twenty bucks to a group of men on the other side of the world, just so I’d remember.

I shook my head, still laughing through my tears.

“You’re welcome,” Preston texted. “Guess you need to pick a new dying fear now. Sorry not sorry.”

He’d never know the extent of what he’d done for me. He’d never know what that video did for me. How it cracked something open the Hunter’s “I love you as a friend…” never could. 

By the time I pulled into redhead’s driveway in Winnsboro, it was near four in the afternoon. I didn’t bother to unpack much. Just the essentials. The redhead and I had been friends since India, 2004, the kind of bond born out of jet lag and shared zodiac signs, cemented by carrying each other through years of quiet disasters. She’d offered up her couch for a few weeks, a soft landing in the in-between before I made my way to St. Louis, where my other best friend was saving a room for me so I could start treatment once she returned from vacation.

That first night felt almost normal. We ran to the grocery store in town where I used my Idaho EBT card to buy steaks and ground beef, the most practical comfort food I could think of. Back at her house, we caught up on life, sunbathing in her backyard pool while cicadas droned overhead. Later, she built me a couch fort, pillows stacked just right, a blanket tucked around me like she was trying to repair something invisible. It was the kind of effort only a good friend makes for a desolate single woman.

The next morning, I showed her the website I’d been building. I asked for her feedback, hungry for direction, hoping she could see the heart of what I’d endured. But her critiques stayed on the surface: punctuation, grammar, formatting. She had a surgeon’s precision for the technical, but nothing to say about the marrow of the work, about the year I had bled out onto the page. It felt odd, but I took notes. Grateful for anything that might help me finally ask the world for help after nearly a year of silence.

By Monday morning, I was up early, determined to launch my GoFundMe that week. But her new border collie had other plans. It leapt on me again and again, scratching my legs and once even hitting my chemo port. Each time I pushed it gently off me, the way Arlie’s trainer had taught me to set boundaries with an overexcited dog. But the redhead didn’t see it that way.

“DO NOT touch my dog like that,” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to slice through the morning air.

I froze, the weight of her words landing heavier than expected. What came next happened fast. I told her I didn’t appreciate her letting her dog jump on me, that it wasn’t cute, that I couldn’t afford the risk. She told me I could leave.

“Is this really the hill you want to die on?” I asked. “A twenty-year friendship ended over an untrained dog?”

She didn’t answer. Just turned and walked away.

So I gathered what little I’d unpacked and put it back in my car. I wasn’t done running, apparently.

Fifteen minutes down the road, I realized my wallet was still at her house. I turned around. The house was locked, and she wasn’t answering her phone. For a moment, I thought I might have to call the police just to get my things back. But then the door opened. She shoved my wallet at me without a word, her expression blank.

That was it.

I drove away and didn’t look back, until a bird smacked hard into my passenger mirror, cracking the glass.

There was only one other place I could go now. Nine hours further into southern Texas. I didn’t bother with a heads up. I just started driving in that direction.

Read the prelude to Exodus here

A blog post by Rachel Smak on grief, loss, and lessons from stage 3C rectal cancer