When I tell you my mother is dying, I don’t want to hear how you know what I’m going through. Don’t tell me your uncle had the flu in the early 90’s so you “get it.”
I don’t want to tell anyone at all. I don’t even know how to truly tell myself.
However I have to talk about it, don’t I? everyone says bottling up emotions is "detrimental." Heaven forbid I don’t get a Haiku about my feelings tattooed on my neck. Forgive me, I forgot to read my copy of Eat Pray Love before I left the house this morning. Don’t tell me “life is a journey.” Don’t tell me to donate to a church or to cry in public.” Don’t say anything until you know what it’s like to get a phone call and a fragile voice tells you to sit down because she has bad news.
On February 13th, 2011, at 5:15 I find out my mother has Cancer.
Until that happens to you don’t pretend you know a damn thing.
Don’t tell me a thing until you watch your mother go through chemotherapy while you live alongside her in the third layer of hell known as Cos Cob, Connecticut. Watch her pain, watch her get better, watch her recovery, and then watch her Cancer come back after four years like its the fucking Summer Olympics. When that happens to you, and only then, can you have an opinion. Then you can tell me how to deal with it in a “healthy manner.”
Do you intend to glibly tell your book club about how you consoled me?
Try to act like you know about the fear in the pit of my stomach that makes me feel like I’m about to do something dangerous; that anxious void will suffocate you like swimming with ankle weights.
While I’m at it: fuck my friends who tell me that it's good that I cried in therapy and that it was probably good to “let it all out.” I'm not confiding in you for this. I'm confiding in you for comfort you pathetic fuck. Walk that fine line between pity and disinterest. At least have the decency to hit me with that that non-condescending level caring tone in your voice that I dream about.
Fuck the girl who just rejected me; and the girl who is currently friend-zoning me. Thanks syncing up your fuckery with my mom’s cancer. Nice timing ladies, well done; a polite golf clap for both of you.
Fuck my dad for calling me too much about irrelevant shit and fuck my brother for being annoying occasionally. Fuck my mom for not handling this perfectly and making me feel weird; But most of all: fuck me.
Fuck me. I can't handle this. Fuck me for being human and having irrational emotions, and absurd thoughts. Fuck me for lashing out at the people closest to me because it’s easy. Fuck me for thinking smoking weed will keep me from being on edge all day and night. Fuck me for being numb and self obsessed at the same time.
None of this can be explained. I wish it were over. I wish I could let this toxic feeling out of me. I wish I were whole again. I wish this were different.
I wish my mom’s cancer was gone and I hope my mom makes it. Not just because I can't handle any of this but because I care about her so much I can't handle the idea of her leaving me. I don’t want to stop watching her smile when I make a loud inappropriate joke in a restaurant, or complaining about my dad and brother with her. I’m not done getting mad at her and going out to lunch with her. I don’t tell her I love her enough and I haven’t gotten around to fixing that yet.
I'm so scared. I'm so angry. I'm so sad. I'm so immovably precarious and I can't understand it. There's nothing to figure out though. It's all fucked and there's nothing I can do. I hate that I hate this and I can’t fix it.
I can't, I can't, I can't, and I know that I somehow will.
Time will fix this like it fixes everything. But that fix is so fucking far away.
That is so fucking far away I can’t even picture it. It may as well be fake it’s so fucking far away.
But it’s real and this low feeling, this lead ball of fear, isn’t a death sentence, it’s as temporary as everything else.
This feeling will eventually dissipate and that gives me the some weird brand of hope. That and the fact that this makes me remember how much I love, and how much love I forgot. That’s what I hate and that’s what’s okay.
For now at least.