The doctor is clear: this will not go away. It can, however, be kept bearable.

Take this situation apart. Each piece goes in one box: yours, or not yours. There is no third box, and almost nothing falls in one piece.

Yours

How you are ill.Following the treatment, arranging your days, choosing your story about it: that part is smaller than you would want and bigger than you think. Being ill happens to you; how you are ill is built by you.
The little word “still” you start every sentence about yourself with.“I can still walk, I still work”: that single word turns every day into a countdown calendar. The same sentences without still describe the same life, but as possession instead of remainder. It is one word, and it is yours.

Not yours

The diagnosis itself.This will not go away, the doctor said, and fighting it is fighting a fact. Accepting is not giving up; it is ceasing to spend your strength on the one half that does not move.

The reasoning. The fact has been pronounced; the form is still open. Everything you still get to choose lives there.

We must train the soul, for we carry in ourselves the seeds of both virtue and vice.Musonius Rufus

Nearby situations