When I first entered the kingdom of the sick, I wasn't interested in befriending my fellow denizens. Only 22, with a limited understanding of grave illness'or loss'I found the idea of a cancer support group for young adults wholly depressing, and I didn't want to get too comfortable with the identity of the cancer patient. Unsurprisingly, a year into treatment, I was as isolated and lonely as I'd ever been in my life. When it came to friendship, I had always prioritized quantity over quality. Attending six schools on three continents before the age of 12 meant that I was skilled at quickly forming friendships but not necessarily at sustaining them. While moving around, I maintained pen-pal correspondences with my best friend Molly in upstate New York, and my best friend Ranya in Tunisia, and my best friend Eleonore in Switzerland. But without a clear idea of when (or even if) we'd see each other again, and with all the address changes, our letters would peter out. The message I took...
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