June 18, 2025
The release of The Cancer Diet is less than a month away, and I want to give you a glimpse of what’s inside.
Today, I’m sharing Chapter 13: A Ghost in My Own City.
I’m offering this one without much context—because I think it speaks for itself. It stands alone. And it says more than I could explain anyway.
Chapter 13: A Ghost in My Own City
10/07/2023
I had to check the date on my phone to figure out what day it was. Time feels like it’s slipping past in a blur, and I’m so detached from everything happening around me. Every time I smoke, I get these head rushes. I know it’s my blood pressure shooting up dangerously high, but I can’t bring myself to care much right now.
I keep thinking of things I want to call Gregg about—random stuff—and then I remember he’s not here anymore.
I haven’t deleted his contact from my phone. I see it every time I scroll through, and it stings, but I can’t do it. It feels like severing one of the last threads connecting us. So much of our last years together was spent on the phone, checking in every now and then.
Sometimes we’d go months without really talking or seeing each other, but I always knew he was just a call away.
I wish we had been closer, but we weren’t.
Gregg was an independent soul from the start. While I stayed close to Mom, he was off playing with other kids—always more of a social butterfly. That dynamic didn’t really change as we grew up. I was closer to our parents because I visited and talked to them more. Gregg wasn’t a bad son, though. He always stepped up to help when they needed him. He just wasn’t one to dig into the deeper things. That was never his way.
I’ve been struggling to sit down and write today. I keep getting up, pacing around my condo, smoking cigarettes, and distracting myself by chatting on my phone. My head feels scattered.
Still, there are things to feel hopeful about. Kate—one of my best friends, even though I’ve screwed up with her more times than I care to admit—is talking to me again. I think I owe Gregg for that one, somehow. And I’ve been trying to talk my parents into buying the lake house now and letting me move in.
Before Gregg died, we were planning to sell it. My cousins own half, and it’s expensive to maintain, but I can’t shake the thought of living there. It would take effort and money on my part, but it feels like the kind of fresh start I need.
My condo in Greenville is nice—centrally located, well-kept, and filled with things Mom’s given me over the years. It’s been a good home, but I’m tired of neighbors. I want the kind of freedom the lake house offers. I want to blast music without worrying about someone banging on the walls. I want to be up late without feeling like I’m breaking some invisible rule.
It’s not just about space. The lake has always felt like a piece of home. It’s something I don’t want to lose, even if it’s impractical.
And speaking of home—Greenville is still my place. For better or worse.
I’ve lived in a lot of spaces, worn a lot of lives, but I’ve always come back here. Sometimes I joke that I just never got out like I was supposed to. Like I missed my window and now I’m stuck. But the truth is—I love this town. Not in some Chamber of Commerce kind of way. I love it in the way you love something that raised you, that shaped you, that still pisses you off sometimes but feels like your bones remember it.
Greenville’s changed a lot over the years—grown up, glowed up, gotten fancier and more polished—but the old bones are still there. The red clay. The sagging porches. The dive bars and gas station parking lots that held some of my worst nights and weirdest conversations.
I’ve walked Main Street stoned and brokenhearted. I’ve sat in coffee shops here pretending to write something important while trying not to fall apart. I’ve been a teacher here, a student here, a son, a screw-up, a shift manager, a ghost trying to haunt my own life. And the city’s just kept going around me, like it always does.
There’s comfort in that.
I still run into people I knew in middle school at the grocery store. I still know which roads to take to avoid traffic and where the pavement changes when you cross into a different neighborhood. I still know the smell of the air when it shifts seasons—when spring’s trying to win, or when summer’s finally giving up.
Greenville benefits a lot from its wealthy citizens. It also benefits—though no one says this part out loud—from a certain kind of segregation. The old Southern kind. The quiet kind. The kind where “like stays with like,” and everybody pretends that’s just coincidence.
People here know how to smile at each other while staying in separate circles. They know which neighborhoods are theirs, which schools are theirs, which churches, which grocery stores, which back roads. It’s not aggressive, but it’s present. And if you’re paying attention, it’s obvious.
I work downtown—right by the pedestrian bridge that cuts across the river and connects our beautifully curated park. It’s become a symbol of the city’s “renaissance.” Tourists love it. Locals post engagement photos there. It’s the kind of place that feels like it was designed to be Instagrammed. And don’t get me wrong—it’s gorgeous. The whole downtown area is. Cobblestones, water features, fancy coffee shops, expensive wine bars with curated lighting and polite Southern accents.
But I stand in the middle of all that almost every day—behind a counter or on a break, wearing a green apron—and sometimes I feel like a ghost in my own city. Like I’m walking through someone else’s vision board.
I don’t resent it. Not exactly. I just know that the Greenville I live in is different from the one on the brochures.
The Greenville I know is made up of strip malls and church basements and back porches and break rooms. It’s teachers stretched too thin and families trying to pretend they’re not falling apart and people who carry more than they can explain in polite conversation. It’s me.
Still, I love it. Even the contradictions. Even the way it frustrates me. Even the way I feel invisible in the middle of something so polished.
Because it’s mine.
It always has been.
Want to read more from The Cancer Diet? The full book launches July 16, 2025.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F7B15NTV
Follow updates and get early content at https://frankmanderson.substack.com.
Or visit the project page on: https://fulcrumandaxis.com/
Frank M. Anderson's Writing 
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