A little over a year ago, my boyfriend was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. We had been best friends for almost two years, but had only recently begun dating. The day before his diagnosis, he had picked me flowers to celebrate four months together. He had been feeling sick for a while at this point, he had a nasty cough that kept him up at night. The student health center at our university prescribed him antibiotics but it just kept getting worse. Before he left my house that day, he asked me to feel his neck as there was a bump near his collar bone. I touched it and said something like “that’s a full on lump, you need to get it checked out.” He made an urgent care appointment for the following day.

I didn’t suspect it was anything serious at first, but as it got later and he was still at the doctor’s, I knew. I had an unshakeable feeling that it was cancer. I remember being with two of our friends that evening, expressing to them how worried I was that my boyfriend was still at his appointment, and them telling me it was okay and probably nothing to worry about. I went home, showered, and got ready for bed. I sat anxiously in my bed, waiting for an update. Finally, late that night he called, “they think I most likely have some type of cancer.”

I fought off tears and reassured him that it would be okay. That I am here, and going to be here through all of this. He had to end the call, his family was there and they couldn’t know about me. He comes from a strict South Asian family and I am white. To this day, I am grateful that he stepped out into the hallway to make that brief call to me. I needed to hear his voice in that moment.

I ran to my roommate’s room, we were the only two home that night. She had been with me earlier in the day and saw how anxious I was. I broke down in tears, telling her that the doctors think he has cancer. She gave me the biggest hug and told me about her multiple friends who are cancer survivors. I had never had anyone close to me have cancer. I didn’t know a lot about it. I was so scared. I called my mom and sobbed to her. I had only recently told my parents about my relationship and now I was telling them that he has cancer.

My memories of the first few days after the initial diagnosis have gotten pretty blurry. At some point, my mom offered to drive up from out of state to come stay with me. I was working at a laundromat at the time. I remember that I worked the day that my mom was driving up. My coworker was about to leave and I was going to be there alone, so I asked if I could step outside and call my mom. I started crying as soon as I stepped out the door, my mom was still a few hours out. I went back inside, obviously upset. My coworker asked if everything was okay, at which point the tears returned and I told her “no, my boyfriend just got diagnosed with cancer. I’m trying to hold it together but I just can’t.” She kindly offered to stay at work and let me go home.

My mom stayed with me for the better part of a month. I couldn’t stop crying, I wasn’t eating, I was barely sleeping. My boyfriend had been admitted to the hospital the same night they told him he likely had cancer. He underwent more testing and began induction chemotherapy as soon as possible. His parents were with him in the hospital 24/7. A couple of days in, his dad asked him about having a girlfriend, and he told the truth. My boyfriend and I both hoped that with his parents now knowing about me, I could come see him and be there for him. We thought that under these circumstances, they could make an exception for our relationship.

The hospital is only an hour and a half away from me. I would’ve driven down there in a heartbeat. I wanted to go down the night he was admitted, but followed his lead on navigating the parent situation. I finally got to see him about a week into his first hospital stay. My mom and I drove down to the hospital, met his parents, and visited for a couple hours. I had been so scared to see him, even though I wanted to so badly. I had spent days and days mourning our future, scared that whether he lives or dies, everything was going to be different forever. Cancer was the only thing on my mind, and I had to remember that he was still himself, just sick. The fear melted away as soon as I got to go up to his room and see him. He was a little out of it from all of the medications, but stood up to greet me and my mom. I wasn’t sure if I could hug him because he had just gotten a spinal tap and I didn’t know where on his back it was, or if it still hurt.

My mom and I got to see him again a couple of days later, leaving with hope that this would be the norm — him staying with his parents and me getting to visit and help out a few times a week. I had overall good interactions with his mom and dad, I thought that maybe they’d look past cultural differences and welcome the love and support I have for their son. In reality, I didn’t end up seeing him again for over a month. The summer went on like this, his parents would allow him to see me once a month if we were lucky. Oftentimes, it took several attempts before a plan came to fruition. He would feel too sick, or need to be admitted to the hospital unexpectedly, or his parents would come up with a last minute reason to prevent us from seeing each other. I wasn’t ever invited to their home, because the rest of the family could never know about me, so they had to drive him to me, an hour away. We would meet in a grocery store parking lot, he would get into my car and we’d go back to my house for as long as they allowed him to be with me. He didn’t want them knowing where I lived.

As visits were few and far between, we relied on letters. I wrote to him almost daily, beginning the day after he found out he had cancer. I would text him pictures of the letters I wrote, not wanting his parents to get ahold of the mail and read them. He wrote me letters too, sending them to me the real, snail mail way. After almost a month in the hospital, he got to go home. Eventually, he started going on walks by himself and we would talk on the phone. We missed each other like crazy. Not being able to be physically there for each other in such a scary time was brutal. Letters and phone calls served as channels for us to tell each other how much we missed one another, bandages until the next time we could visit in person.

In late June, I received an email from a job I had applied for back in April. They wanted to set up an interview. Accepting that I wasn’t going to see my boyfriend nearly as much as I had hoped to, I thought that getting a second job would be good for me. I needed to keep busy otherwise I would sit at home all day, miserable that we couldn’t see each other.

Summer went on. I got the second job, we kept writing the letters, we kept talking on the phone, I spent time with friends, I went to therapy, we saw each other when we could. I moved out of my old house, into a new place with new roommates. It was exciting until moving day came and I was mostly doing it myself while my new roommates had help from their boyfriends. I called my boyfriend crying that night. I was overwhelmed by all of the changes taking place without him. It felt like I was being forced to move on with my life while he was trapped in cancer-world. I obviously didn’t want to move on without him, I wanted nothing more than to be there with him but I had been pushed out by his parents. I tried so hard to understand where they were coming from and to give them time to warm up to me.

At some point earlier in the summer, my boyfriend becoming increasingly unhappy and isolated at home, we started throwing around the idea of him running away from his parents to live with me. We were thinking sometime in the spring, when he was set to be done with intensive treatment. He was 20 years old, and there is no reason for him to be treated the way he was being treated in the hardest period of his life. It wasn’t just me that he wasn’t allowed to see, the same control applied when it came to friends.

I started school again in the fall, taking a full credit load and still working two jobs. We kept calling, kept writing letters, kept talking about him leaving home to be with me. It got really dark around this time, I was getting increasingly worried about him staying there. I offered to go pick him up right then. It was becoming clear that him staying with his parents was not safe in the long run. We became more serious about the logistics of him leaving home and solidified the plan.

After a few failed attempts, the plan worked. In early December, two friends of ours picked up my boyfriend and a few trash bags full of his clothes from his family’s home while his parents were away. After being heartbroken by the previous failed attempts, I tried to keep my expectations low, as hopeful as I was. It was a Sunday, I had a shift that morning and wasn’t sure if I could keep it together if the plan didn’t work again. I woke up extra early and checked my phone, it looked like it was going to happen. Our friends were near his house, waiting for the right moment to go pick him up. I called my mom, trying to calm myself down. I couldn’t believe it, by the time I would get off work, he would be here for good. Not just a sporadic visit, but permanently.

Leading up to him leaving, we had talked a lot about how hard certain aspects would be. On his first day back, though, we tried not to think about any of that. We were together again and that was all that mattered. I got off of work a little earlier than usual after telling my coworkers what was going on. I drove to our friends’ house, where I found my boyfriend waiting on the porch. I ran to him and we shared the best hug. It was a total pinch-me moment. After months of pain and loneliness, we were together.

I drove him to most of his appointments. I made space for his things in my tiny room. Those types of things were easy to figure out, we just made it work. The hard part was constant voicemails from his parents once they found my number via call logs, knowing that they were driving around looking for him, and manipulative emails. We hunkered down and did everything we could to avoid interaction with them, finding support through his team at the hospital, our friends, and my parents.

It’s now been over a year since he was diagnosed. He is in remission and undergoing maintenance chemotherapy. He has a job now. He lived with me for a few months and is now subletting a room from a friend until we can get our own apartment together. We got to spend Christmas with my mom and brother. We got to spend our birthdays and first anniversary together. I have been able to support him in the way that we always felt was right. He has been here for me, too. We’ve had to lean on each other a lot this past year, and have grown so much closer and stronger because of everything we’ve been through together. We’ve matured both as individuals and as a couple. Cancer has changed my life, I view the world so much differently than I did before my boyfriend got sick. I have learned to accept whatever I can’t control in life, because I have no way of knowing how any other scenario would’ve played out and there’s no use ruminating over something I can’t change. None of this has been easy, and even though he’s out of intensive treatment and in remission, it’s still hard.

I’ve been crying all of the time these past few weeks. I have been struggling in school all year, failing classes for the first time in several years. I haven’t been taking the best care of myself. I’ve been having a hard time doing more than the bare minimum lately. I’ve come to the realization recently that part of the reason I’m hurting so badly right now is that I’m finally processing how traumatic the past year has been.

Cancer doesn’t feel like as big of a part of our lives as it did earlier this year. Of course, he still has appointments once a month and medications to take every day, and he’s still going to be receiving treatment for the next year and a half. We’re still going through this and it will shape the rest of our lives in one way or another. However, I feel like for the first time in the year since he was diagnosed, I can step back and reflect on everything that happened and acknowledge how hard it has been. I feel like I’m back in the early days of his diagnosis, breaking down nearly every day. Just thinking about him having cancer makes me teary-eyed in the same way it did early on. The difference is that I have him here with me now and we have each other. Not just through phone calls or letters, but together for real, every day.