Cancer

When someone says something nice about you that feels wrong in your mouth, the problem is not with their seeing but with the gap between what they noticed and what you recognize in yourself. You take their words with you anyway, turning them over long after the conversation ends, testing whether they might fit if you hold them differently. The discomfort is not rejection but the strange work of letting someone else's version of you exist alongside the one you know. What makes you keep thinking about it is not the wrongness but the small possibility that both versions might be true.