Single. White. Female.

I met him just before the floor.

This was in July, or what I now call July, in Phoenix, when the sun was an unrelenting fist and everything smelled like scorched plastic and tire dust. I’d been ghosted by a man who called himself a feminist but interrupted me every time I mentioned my mom’s suicide. So naturally, I downloaded FarmersOnly. Not because I’m a farmer. Not because he was. Because I’d rather date a man with a gun than another who describes himself as a "thought leader" in his Hinge bio.

He was from Swan Valley, Idaho. A hunter. Not metaphorical. Elk-blood-on-his-hands hunter. Where the men still wear camo like spiritual armor and Democrats are rarer than cougars.

We had nothing in common but some startled chemistry, comparable horoscope signs, and the collective weariness of people who knew grief intimately but handled it very differently. He skinned things. I designed websites for small business owners who said things like "circle back" with a straight face. We were both killing something slowly.

Then I got cancer.

Not the Hallmark kind with casseroles and holding hands and whispered prayers over your name. The kind you get when your mother is dead by suicide, your father just died of dementia, and your brother lives like grief is a thing you can snort. The kind of cancer that comes not just for your body but for every illusion you had about support systems and stability and the people you thought might show up.

I told him over the phone. He said, "You can come here."

So I did. Because my apartment had just flooded, and my insurance had decided I was no longer its problem. Because I had no parents, no kids, no partner, no nearby friends. Only clients. And clients are not a community. They are transactions wearing empathy like cologne. I was living in a city full of yoga instructors and lifestyle coaches who couldn’t be bothered to say, "Do you need a ride?" but were happy to say, "Let me know if I can help!" knowing I wouldn’t.

I packed grief like sweaters. Folded: Mom. Pandemic. Dad. Career. Me.

I drove north to Idaho. A stranger's house. A state I didn’t know. A man I didn’t understand. I arrived like weather—uninvited, uncontained.

He loves me, or something like it. He chops wood like he’s angry at the past. Sometimes he brings me soup, or tea, or painkillers I don’t ask for. But he hasn’t said the words. Not once. He says them to my dog. His truck. To the old lady Linda at the post office. He even once said it to a sandwich. But not to me.

And I’m not afraid of dying. Dying is a narrative arc. Dying has structure. But I am afraid of dying without ever hearing "I love you" from a man who didn’t help make me. Who chose it. Who meant it.

I live in an Airbnb. I live in suitcases. The rental market is trash. Billionaires buying out millionaires for views of Baldy and the Tetons. I eat soup like it’s penance. His family treats me like I’m part of the wallpaper—faded, familiar, better ignored than acknowledged. They talk about weather and diesel and someone’s divorce. They pass the salt like I’m not slowly coming undone three feet away. They never ask what stage it is. Never ask if I’m scared. Not once.

The dogs, though. The dogs notice. The dogs love me without hesitation or explanation. My dog and his brothers. They lay their heads in my lap. They bring me sticks like offerings. The animals of Swan Valley seem to understand something the humans don’t: that presence is a form of mercy. That silence, when shared, can be gentler than words withheld.

Sometimes, after enough days with the dogs, the humans start to soften too. Someone lingers longer in the kitchen. His youngest daughter—his shadow—brought me tea once without saying a word. His stepmother bought my dog a Christmas present. I think: maybe this is what passes for tenderness here. Not talk. Not concern. Just quiet gestures. Dog-like in their devotion. Earnest in their smallness.

I scroll Facebook and see the women who say: “I was just diagnosed, but thank God for my husband, my kids, my support system.” I want to reach through the screen, shake them, scream: Do you understand what you have?

Single. White. Female. No parents. No kids. No husband. No net. Just me, my half-broken body, and a man who kills things with love.

This is America. Where we train women to be independent so we can tax them, work them, praise their strength while quietly praying they don’t ask for help. And when they get sick? We let them slip into the cracks. Because nobody knows what to do with a woman who needs care but doesn’t have a wedding ring.

I wanted to heal with sourdough. To rebrand my grief with mason jars and mountain views like the ballerina-farmers on Instagram. But I couldn’t make the bread rise. I couldn’t make myself rise.

Some days I imagine going back. To Phoenix. To a life where I could sit in a chair I own, in a room I pay for, and pay people to hold my hand so I don’t have to beg anyone to do it. But Phoenix never offered soup. Idaho at least offers broth.

My clients, the same ones I undercharged, who knew I’d just lost my mother and moved states, the same ones I shot for during COVID for free to “keep them afloat,” asked me if my cancer would delay their rebrand.

Spoiler: it did.

I stopped telling clients I had cancer. It was easier to disappoint them slowly than deal with the performative concern. I learned how to ghost myself.

This isn’t a love story. Or maybe it is. Just not the kind you brag about. The kind that looks like chopping wood in silence. The kind where the words never come. The kind that keeps you alive even when the rest of the world forgot you were still here.

I am angry. Alive. Unkissed, but not unloved.

Unhealed, but still healing.

If this is the margin, then let it be where I write from.

If my body is the only home I have left, then let me live here loudly—until the eviction notice comes.

Single. White. Female. We exist. We grieve. We survive. Not because it’s beautiful.

But because no one else will do it for us.

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