The Town That Wasn’t Mine

I moved to Idaho to start a new life, but now I’m not sure what’s left of it.

The man I moved here with—The Hunter—and I are no longer together. This isn’t a public dragging. This isn’t a smear. He’s not a villain. We just weren’t aligned.

I wanted to build a life with someone who opened the door and said, Here, come see what I love. Let me show you the place I’ve carved out in the world. I came here wide-eyed and bruised, hopeful in that dangerous way grief makes you hopeful—like maybe if I loved someone enough, the rest would fall into place.

But it didn’t. And it hasn’t.

And now I find myself alone in Swan Valley—a town so small it doesn’t have a grocery store, let alone a hospital. It’s an hour to the nearest cancer center, an hour to any form of treatment. An hour to anything, really. Isolation isn’t just a feeling out here—it’s a geography. And there’s only so much healing you can do when your nearest lifeline is sixty miles away and the silence in the house feels louder than your own voice.

Every week he hunted. Every Saturday. While I stayed home in a town I didn’t choose, waiting for an invitation to fall in love with the place he called home. I was just a girl asking to go to the Potato Museum, wanting to explore a new state, a new city, a new life I uprooted everything for. I asked for little things—moments that might help me see Idaho through his eyes. Moments that might help me build something here. I thought he could be the one to show me the beauty of this place so I could actually fall in love with something here. But once I arrived, it felt like I’d already overstayed my welcome. Like the invitation expired the moment I unpacked. Like I was outside the glass looking in, while he told me I was home.

He told me we’d go to appointments together. He told me we’d snowmobile, ride horses, explore. But eight months later, not one promise came to life. Every day I said “I love you” to the back of a man who couldn’t say it back.

I don’t blame him for all of it. I made choices, too—many of them laced with my own stubbornness and self-sabotage. But my pain didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened in the quiet gaps between what I hoped for and what actually happened.

So we ended it.

He’s keeping my dog, Arley. And while that wrecks me, it also gives me peace. Because if nothing else, I know Arley is loved here. He loves this land, these mountains, and he loves The Hunter. And The Hunter loves him back, fully and fiercely. That matters more than anything.

But now it’s just me. No relationship. No job. No real reason to stay. My treatment has been on hold because I can’t bring myself to fight for a life that doesn’t feel like mine. It’s hard to heal in a house that never became a home. Hard to picture a future in a place that’s only ever been a layover for someone else’s routine.

Swan Valley is beautiful, but it’s not mine. The mountains don’t know my name. The fields never asked me to stay. And I’ve been trying to build a life in someone else’s hometown without ever getting a proper tour.

I don’t know what’s next. I just know I can’t stay here and keep pretending this was the life I wanted.

To those of you following my story—through grief, through diagnosis, through all the ways love and illness unravel quietly—I’m still in it. Just with a little less certainty now, and a little more air in my lungs.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a place that looked like home from the outside but never let you inside the door—just know I get it.

I’m in it with you.

—Rachel

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