How They See Me

In the first reflection, I described what it feels like to live at The Edge of Now — the constant shifting inside myself between outer presence and inner turmoil. But the edge isn’t just an internal reality. It also shapes how others experience me.

Most people only see one side. They see the Thom who cracks jokes, makes big plans, throws himself into adventures. They see the lighthearted version — upbeat, resilient, “go big or go home.” They respond to that. They lean into it. And I’m glad they do.

But they don’t see the other side: the fatigue, the reckoning, the weight of mortality that presses in every hour of the day. That part doesn’t surface as easily, and when it does, it can make people uncomfortable. So more often than not, I keep it unsaid.

The Choice of Lightness

It would be easy to call this a mask, but it’s not. My positivity is real. I genuinely love laughter, I genuinely love wonder, I genuinely love squeezing meaning out of each day.

But it is a choice. I’ve learned that if I led with heaviness, if I spoke every thought about death, illness, and fear, the circle around me would shrink fast. Not because people don’t care, but because most don’t know how to stay. They would feel helpless, unsure of what to say, overwhelmed by the weight.

So I choose lightness. Not to deny the truth, but to preserve connection. To keep people near.

The Letters Never Sent

The cost of that choice is silence. The thoughts I don’t say out loud pile up like letters never sent.

I write them in my head. I sometimes draft them in journals. They are the things I wish I could tell the people I love: how fragile I feel at times, how scared, how angry, how urgent life feels when you know time is running shorter.

But I don’t always send those letters. I don’t always speak those words. Because to do so would risk turning a dinner into a dirge, or a laugh into a silence no one knows how to fill.

And so the unspoken lives in me. Always present. Always pressing. Always there beneath the smile.

The Misunderstanding

Here’s the irony: people often mistake my humor and drive for proof that I’ve somehow “made peace” with cancer, that I live without fear, that I’m always positive. They confuse the energy I bring into the room with the whole truth of who I am.

What they don’t realize is that the laughter often exists alongside the turmoil, not instead of it. The “big or go home” spirit isn’t denial — it’s a response to the inner weight. I chase life hard precisely because I know how fragile it is.

The misunderstanding isn’t malicious. It’s just incomplete. But it leaves me holding much of the struggle alone.

A Double-Edged Gift

So this is the paradox: choosing lightness keeps me tethered to the living world, but it also deepens the solitude of my inner one. Outwardly, I am surrounded. Inwardly, I often walk alone.

Yet if I had to choose again, I would still lead with lightness. Because in these finite days, what I want most is connection — laughter with friends, plans for tomorrow, moments that feel normal. Those things are life-giving. And they are possible only if I carry the weight quietly most of the time.

Looking Ahead

But there are rare moments when the unsaid does break into the open — when someone doesn’t look away, doesn’t change the subject, doesn’t retreat into easy reassurance. Instead, they stay. They let both the light and the heavy exist in the same space.

Those are unforgettable moments, and they change everything.

That’s where I’ll go next: what it means when someone actually chooses to stay with me at the edge — not just seeing the version of me they want to see, but meeting me in both my lightness and my struggle, and not turning away.