Nothing Else Matters

I don’t know why, but the Metallica song keeps playing through my head.

I was so excited to feel well enough to be in the office today – wig and everything! You explain to people, I feel great but my mom literally broke her neck. And then you get a text randomly that notifies you that your mom has been given her last rites and after that, I don’t really know what to say.

Thank you to my cousin who read between the lines and suggested I call the hospital. The nurse explained the priest had been walking around the floor, my mother is no closer to death now than she was before, but SWEET BABY JESUS.

Cancer has been the least of it, recently. I have a complicated relationship with my family but my mom is my mom, and to have her suffering in a hospital room I can’t be in is really hard to deal with. I am the planner and the caretaker and the one who communicates but that’s in my current life, and not my former. And those two worlds are colliding. I don’t know if a lot of you would recognize the extremely insecure former-me. And my former life hasn’t seemed to believe in me like some of you do. So it’s just a giant clusterf*ck.

Thank god for therapists and a hell of a good support network. Maybe you don’t think or realize your out-of-the-blue text means anything, but for someone who spent the first 25 years of their life wondering why they continue to exist, it means a hell of a lot. Cancer is nothing compared to standards you can never meet.

As I said at the very beginning, my mental health battles would serve me well in this fight, and that continues to be true. Despite my mom being in the ICU, I am feeling good—great, even. I met friends for drinks tonight, and I am still flabbergasted by the outpouring of support. The people that stick around. It is overwhelming and yet…validating. How can something be so shitty and yet, it’s somehow a blessing I didn’t know I needed? Chemo seems relatively easy compared to this whole mind-bending situation!

How do you thank people who have such a pivotal role in your well-being? I don’t have an answer. So many of you have said “you’d do the same” and maybe I would, but it doesn’t mean you have to. And yet…

I think people are a little thrown off by how cheerful I am if you hear me IRL. I like to tell people that there’s so much I can cry about – the situation and the pain. In fact, I do cry about it, sometimes. It’s so much better to cling onto something that’s happy. Those moments are so much brighter than they use to be. It’s another tally mark in the IDGAF column, but there’s some purpose to it.

I’ve always been the woman with a frickin’ smile on her face and now it has a meaning to it. Maybe I was meant to kick cancer’s ass.

Regardless, I am somehow feeling good two weeks out. My symptoms are all covered, and I’ve rallied really well this round. I am doing the right things, the things I need to do, even if my mind struggles against it. My body is leading the charge. That’s working, so we’re just gonna keep going with that!

By the way, the purple wig was a bit hit at work. 😉 Confident-me (with a confident friend!) walked into a bar BALD, even! ? That felt really good. <3