Some days you feel almost normal. You laugh at something on television. You eat a full meal and enjoy it. You forget, for a whole hour, that you are sick. And then the guilt arrives: should I feel this good? Is it wrong to have a good day?
And then there are the other days. The days when getting out of bed is a triumph. The days when the fear is so loud it drowns everything else out. The days when you are certain you cannot do this, cannot keep going through this.
Both kinds of days belong to you. Neither cancels the other out. A good day does not mean you are not seriously ill. A bad day does not mean you are failing at being sick. Cancer is not a straight line — it is a landscape with valleys and unexpected clearings, and you are walking through it as best you can.
Let yourself have the good days without apology. Joy during illness is not denial or delusion. It is the extraordinary human capacity to find light even in the most difficult circumstances. If you laugh today, let yourself laugh. If you feel something like peace this afternoon, let yourself rest in it. You do not have to be suffering every moment to honor the seriousness of what you are going through.
And on the bad days, try not to use the good ones against yourself. "I was fine on Tuesday, why can't I handle today?" The bad days are not evidence that you were faking the good ones, or that you are getting weaker. Treatment is variable. Emotions are variable. Bodies are variable. Today is hard. That is the only thing today proves.
Tell the people around you how you are actually doing, rather than always reporting the same average. "I had a really hard morning" and "today was actually okay" both give the people who love you something real to hold onto. It helps them calibrate, and it helps you stop performing a constant okay that you may not always feel.
You are living a full emotional life in a very compressed and intense season. Some of that life will be hard beyond description. Some of it will surprise you with its warmth. Let both be true. That is not contradiction. That is living.