OCTOBER 29 — If I did need to choose a favourite season I would pick autumn.

There’s something comforting about the way colours change; how the heat of summer recedes and it gets cooler, not the bone-numbing cold of winter or the mild chill of spring.

I remember walking past fallen leaves in San Jose, seeing the trees all decked in Fall colours, the rich browns and yellows, almost festive in contrast to summer and the dried-out thirsty grass.

October is the United Nations’ designated Mental Health Awareness Month – did you know that suicide rates are highest in spring and summer?

That statistic surprised me but it also comforted me a little.

If you have ignored the voices in your head telling you to die in spring and summer then seeing autumn is like a survivor’s gift.

You’re still here, the autumn breeze whispers.

As Mental Health Month winds down I think about how mental health is taken a lot more seriously now.

One of my friends runs her own mental health services portal, Aloe Mind, after experiencing for herself the benefits of therapy and I have enjoyed watching her and her business thrive.

Yet in practice our public healthcare is ill-equipped to deal with mental health challenges that come with any and all diagnoses.

A cancer patient in KL posted about how she was referred to a psychologist after turning up to oncology feeling suicidal.

She said the staff were unhelpful and I think that there really needs to be more visibility about resources for cancer patients if they’re struggling with mental health.

When I was still going to Universiti Malaya Medical Centre (PPUM), a breast cancer support group volunteer handed me a book and her number.

She told me to call anytime.

I didn’t get that at KL General Hospital (HKL).

Oncologists should really be reminded to tell their patients where to go if they need mental health support — no one asked me how I was doing, mentally or emotionally at HKL though PPUM also has bad bedside manner issues, what with doctors who will casually talk about their patients like they’re invisible.

Instead of showing up to cancer patient support association events I am more comfortable talking to the other survivors I’ve met online, one of them being a woman I’ll just call T.

T is much younger than I am and I was rather surprised when she started reaching out to me on Instagram.

We’ve met up a couple of times and she is like a walking sunbeam, so full of energy and laughter you wouldn’t think she had cancer.

That’s one thing we have in common; that we look far too “healthy” to be sick.

“Only other cancer patients get it, you know?” I told her once.

It was through sharing that she found out something she was experiencing was actually a side effect of the treatment and that’s why I say to cancer patients: find your cancer friends.

Cancer is hard.

It struck me the other day that if I truly listed down everything I’ve experienced on a day-to-day basis it would seem like a horror story.

Oh, yes, I’m in pain every day.

No, I don’t have the luxury to dwell on it because I have to work, life goes on, I have a Pokémon game to play and concerts to review, friends to see, cake to eat.

I’ve endured suicidal ideation, PTSD, major clinical depression and anxiety attacks so dealing with the largeness of a cancer diagnosis wasn’t easy but at least I could just say, as I always did, “I got through X and Y, I can get through this too.”

What doesn’t kill you prepares you to survive the next thing that could kill you, I suppose.

Cancer has cured me of one thing — the desire to hurtle towards death.

Like all my treatments, I will wait for when my appointment with death arrives.

EJAE, the singer and composer who is now famous globally thanks to the popularity of Kpop Demon Hunters, said that when she heard the song Golden had hit Number One, she told herself: 너무 잘했어/neomu jalhaesso (You did so well).

She had dreamed of being a singer once but her agency dropped her, leading to her taking a different path — becoming a songwriter instead.

The door didn’t open for her then but there was a different one waiting for her, years later.

Being able to find that peace with things not going your way, letting go of what may not be meant for you at that time is a lesson bought with tears.

Yet it is an important lesson and refusing to learn it leaves you carrying bitterness and resentment, neither of which are healthy.

So I look forward to discovering new paths, turning the doorknobs that will let me do so easily and greeting the people who I encounter along my journey, no matter how long they care to walk with me.

As I say a lot, my life is nothing like I’d hoped but better than I’ve ever dreamed.

When my treatment is finally over and I celebrate, hopefully, somewhere that isn’t here, I will say to myself, and my ever-suffering body this: you did so well, though it was so hard.

I hope that if you’re having a hard time yourself that you tell yourself that, too.

If you need to hear it from someone else, I will write it here: you did well. You worked hard. Thank you for still being here. Thank you for still trying.

May you always find something to dream about, like I dream of again, standing under trees in autumn.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.