Some Infinities: Why the Momentary Soulmate Matters

Up until recently I was quite uncomfortable watching plot lines about characters dealing with cancer. Concurrent to the timing of my most recent surgery, the film, The Fault In Our Stars came out. Though I have been in remission nearly a decade, I tend to shy away from the sensationalized telling of a cancer story. However, for some reason I had a pressing desire, perhaps even need, to see the film. My sister advised me to wait until I had fully recovered from my surgery to see it, as she feared it would hit too close too home... After all, it was about a seventeen year old girl (the age I was when I was diagnosed), navigating the complications of first loves and growing up with cancer as a backdrop. (Which is what I did.)

Though I was terrified to see it, I had to. Determined to be brave, I put on my sunglasses and went to face the feature. Though I produced copious amounts of tears and identified with a lot of the film, I left feeling oddly emancipated and invigorated. As I reflected on this good but surprising feeling, I realized, for the first time in a decade, my cancer story was no longer my story (or at least not my only one) and while I was able to empathize with the characters, I no longer identified myself as one of them. I strangely gained a great deal of closure from the experience and went on to see the film an additional two times and recently completed the book. Let me preface this by saying there were many things in both the book and film I took issue with, most especially trivializing and mocking the role of faith in such struggles. I found little congruence in how the story deals with God, as my own experience has only further confirmed and solidified my faith in Him. I couldn't relate to the hopeless framing. However two ideas deeply resonated with me. The first being that a cancer story does not have to be a perpetual, all encompassing, defining, personal narrative and the second being the idea of "Some Infinities."

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.” 
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

My transition from adolescence to adulthood all took place with cancer, treatment, and recovery concurrently playing in the background. Not a solitary decision refrained from being colored, for better or worse, by those experiences. How I spent my time, where I chose to go to college, what I chose to study, how I engaged socially and who I fell in love with were occasionally side effects and often profound blessings informed by a daunting backdrop.
In my entire decade of being launched into adulthood, while remaining a vulnerable child, I was only genuinely in love once. It happened right on the cusp of the cancer battle, and he quickly became the symbol of my past, present and future. It took years, over 3,000 miles and some really strange suitors in order for me to fully let him go. I am not sure this man, whom at the time I believed to love infinitely, ever sincerely reciprocated. He may have been enamored with me for a short time, but never saw the infinity I did. He was/is a good boy/man. His kindness was rare and the type you don't easily come by. In many ways, he was an ideal first love. I do not have a moments pause about him being mine. However, the swirl of my personal circumstance, shaken as a snow globe of chaos, clouded my ability to see we had evolved and the incongruity between us. For years, those close to me pleaded I let him go, but I never was able. There was no placebo for the hope he had once given me and for the past normalcy he tied me to. There is challenge enough to reason your way through the fallibility of a first love at a young age… add cancer and almost everything feels desperate, earnest, and shakespearean. I associated him with the last time I had truly felt normal, I associated him with all the joys of being seventeen, idealistic, carefree, beautiful and present. I associated him with my hopes for a future, for marriage, and for children. I viewed my life as a dream sequence with him as the book ends. He provided the solid memory of who I was when I felt like a real person and the tangible hope of who I might be when I was no longer malignant. Over time I began to recognize how profoundly my past and future created cloud cover over who I actually was. Eventually the dust settled into who I needed to be.

Though he did not turn out to be my infinite love, he was the first person to give me real faith in it. He represented the infinite hope existing in finite circumstances.

Throughout the years I have struggled as I have felt friendships ebb and flow, relationships wane, and the absence of those who were once present fixtures in my life. My love and losses never fail to surprise me. But with every new relationship, flickering friendship, lost opportunity and disappointing outcome I have come to know infinity. I have come to learn the exquisite truth that imperfect people and circumstances can provide perfecting tutorials. The momentary soulmate matters. Though one should do all they can to avoid being a doormat, one should also recognize the difference and privilege of providing another soul with a stepping stone. Every heartache I have encountered is merely the fruit of a prior, perfect, infinity.

I have faith in an all encompassing infinity. Every soul possesses an unbounded set. I know this through the ennobling blessing of "some infinities." I am grateful every day for imperfect people and circumstances that never cease to come into my life at perfect times. I am humbled by the little infinities every great loss brings me on the days I feel limited and bound. Some infinities may be larger than others, but every infinity provides innumerable possibilities and impacts our eternity.