That is not heroism.

That is the disease of self-erasure in its final, most dangerous form, and it nearly cost me the one thing I had left, which was the chance to spend my last months as myself.

I did not know that yet, lying behind the curtain with my ring off.

But I was about to learn it, and learning it — late, almost too late — turned out to be the whole point of the little time I had left.

I need to be careful here, because there is a version of a woman in my position that the world finds beautiful, and it is a poison, and I swallowed a good deal of it before Marva made me spit it out.

The beautiful version is the one who keeps her diagnosis to herself so as not to burden anyone, who slips away quietly, who thinks of everyone else right up to the end.