The “Why Me?” Question: Finding Peace After Acoustic Neuroma
One question returns again and again in the minds of many patients:
Why me?
If this condition is rare, why did it happen to me?
Was it punishment?
Was it fate?
Was it bad luck?
Was there some reason behind it at all?
I asked myself these questions repeatedly after my diagnosis. Some nights I searched for religious answers. Other nights philosophical ones. I tried to force meaning onto something that had arrived without permission.
Eventually, I reached an answer that initially felt uncomfortable, but later brought me peace.
The truth is this:
Not everything happens for a reason.
Sometimes biology simply unfolds in ways we neither choose nor deserve.
Before my acoustic neuroma, I believed life could largely be managed. Not perfectly, of course. I knew suffering existed. I knew terrible things happened to people. But underneath my plans and routines was a quiet assumption that life was still negotiable. That if you worked hard enough, planned carefully enough, and made sensible choices, things would broadly move in the right direction.
Then a tumour grew silently inside my head while I was busy planning my future.
That is one of the strange things about illness. It exposes how little control we truly have. You wake up believing you are directing your life, only to discover your biology has been writing part of the script without your knowledge.
I did not choose the tumour.
I did not choose the hearing loss.
I did not choose the fatigue, imbalance, facial numbness, or brain fog.
And yet suddenly, they became part of me.
What disturbed me most was not only the illness itself, but the realisation that what I called “myself” could be physically altered. A tumour pressing on nerves changed my hearing, my balance, my energy, my emotions, even the texture of thought itself.
That realisation can push a person toward a very cold view of existence. You begin seeing how much of life is shaped by biology, chance, timing, and circumstances outside your control.
And honestly, there is some truth in that.
We do not control everything.
Perhaps we control far less than we like to believe.
But strangely, accepting that brought me peace rather than despair.
Because if I did not choose this illness, then I also did not need to carry unnecessary guilt for it.
The tumour was not punishment.
It was not a moral judgement.
It was not evidence that I had failed at life.
It was simply something that happened.
And once I stopped demanding cosmic explanations, I could focus on something more useful:
How do I live now?
I realised that meaning is probably not something we discover hidden inside the universe. Meaning is something we create through experience, relationships, kindness, responsibility, and endurance.
A conversation.
A child laughing.
A friend showing up.
Someone holding your hand in hospital.
A quiet moment of peace after months of fear.
These things matter, even in a universe that often feels random.
So if you are asking “Why me?”, I do not think there is always an answer that fully satisfies the mind.
But I do think there is a healthier question:
What now?
How do I move forward from here?
How do I build a meaningful life despite uncertainty?
How do I remain human through suffering instead of becoming consumed by it?
You do not need to control everything to live a meaningful life.
Sometimes peace begins when you stop trying to explain every tragedy and instead learn how to carry it.