A 23-year-old blogger with a serious health challenge tells us about herself and our own lives in a remarkable report from the edge. 

“The last few months have arguably been the most difficult months in my life,” BJ Colangelo told us in a May 2 post on her blog, Days of the Woman. She apologizes for appearing to abandon her site, she says, but “I’ve been a little bit…preoccupied.”

What follows is a remarkable, affecting, and devastatingly insightful story of her own courage and, strangely enough, an exploration of why all of us – good, humane, smart people – truly love horror. “I have/had pancreatic cancer. A team of doctors removed a tennis ball sized pancreatic tumor, 40% of my pancreas, my entire spleen, and 20+ lymph nodes.  I spent some time in the hospital and I’m still going through recovery.  There’s a 40% chance of the cancer coming back and considering I’m only 23, that’s an arbitrary number because the statistics are based on a majority of people suffering from the disease being 25+ years my senior.”

Right now, she tells us, she’s cancer-free. But she’ll have to wait at least five years to be sure she’s truly out of the woods.

And that strangest part of this potentially tragic and ultimately uplifting story is this: ”I’ve always prided myself on being a strong woman, but god damn if cancer doesn’t make you feel the most vulnerable you ever will.  I’ve always watched a large amount of horror movies, but since being diagnosed I’ve found myself almost exclusively watching horrorIt’s one thing to explain away watching some of the depraved stuff you see in horror movies when you’re healthy, but how can you watch horror when you’re dying?”

We’re not going to excerpt a lot more from the piece; it deserves to be read in its entirety on BJ Colangelo’s own site, appropriately subtitled “A blog for the feminine side of fear.” But you should go read it – now. Now just for the emotion of the ‘save,’ but for the perspectives that apply to us all. For instance:

 “There was something incredibly therapeutic about watching other people literally rip off their skin when all I wanted to do was live inside someone else’s.  It’s a lot easier to forget you’re dying when you’re watching other people do it in front of your eyes.  There’s a safe distance because you’re watching someone other than you suffer, but the reality is that no one is actually getting hurt.  It’s therapeutic. For me, it helps to see the pain and terror I feel personified on film. It permitted my anxiety to come out, be acknowledged, and socially comforted.”

 “The ultimate and universal appeal of horror is the desire to survive despite tremendous odds and uncertainty. How could sick people not enjoy that?  The other part is the need to realize it could be worse.”

“At the end of the day, horror makes me feel better about myself because it rewards all the virtues of living a healthy lifestyle.  Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t fornicate, don’t do drugs, and you’ll survive.

In the end, she answers the question like this: “How can you watch horror when you’re dying? Honestly? How could you not?” And along the way, she talks in a hugely effective and affective way about her own life – and, of course, like all great writing, about us.

We couldn’t be happier than BJ’s feeling better. We just hope she gets back to writing more often; her work from earlier this year, like her piece on horror and rape culture and her profile of Vera and Taissa Farmiga, makes us wish she was writing for us all the time. And you can check out her list of the best horror films of 2013 — a nearly perfect list, as far as AN is concerned — at www.iconsoffright.com.  But first, most important: go to her site, spend some time reading her stuff, and bookmark her for the future. You can also follow her on twitter here. Chances are it’s the best thing you’ll do for yourself this week.