Kinfolk

By the time I post this, it will have been seven weeks since I received my cancer diagnosis. When I first discovered that I had the “big C,” I imagined every person who took part in my life would rise to hold me. A landscape of love to embrace, coddle and send me on my way to battle. 

That every grudge and failed relationship would put it to rest for my mortality. For the most part, that is 97% true. 

But that 3%. 

They live rent-free in my head.

Why do we, as humans, fixate on those fragmented particles in an otherwise seamless vision?

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But the real heartbreak mindfuck in all of this? The people you would hope would break every obstacle for you in your time of need?

My parents.

My father left when I was 3, made some random reappearances after messaging me on MySpace when I was 15, and exited again just before my 19th birthday.

My mother. God. If you know, you know. A stray cat with a hundred lives, all of which have renewed her miseries. A victim every day. The woman who I’ve spent over a decade rushing to hospitals for. Just… a mess.

Mom spent the first three months of 2022 in the ICU for hepatic encephalopathy and advanced cirrhosis (all fancy ways to say alcohol and substance abuse), all while in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator.

She received her second DUI in September.

Her reason? “Your cancer diagnosis made me do this.”

Airing dirty laundry is nasty and mean, so I’ll leave it there. But with no biological parents on my side through this, coupled with the newly departed diamond of my heart, Mee Ma, it’s been heavy.

So fucking heavy.

I grow weaker with each chemo round and resent the helplessness I face in asking for help. The fact that I cannot hold myself as I ever have is undeniable from nobody to everybody. 

I wake in pain. Pain follows me into sleep.

My immune system is shot.

I am always cold and listing daily ailments.

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And as a biological daughter, I am alone. Alone, a mother, and beaming all that I’ve got to my two biological children. Scraping the bottom of the barrel of vitality and trying to shine those brittle flecks onto my children. Grasping at heredity straws of well-being to pass along, without much hope. All of these emotions I thought I had forgiven entirely until Cancer.

I guess the point I’m struggling to make is that this disease has kicked up the dust. So much more than Taxotere, Carboplatin, Perjeta, and Herceptin. The rage, the heartbreak, and the uncomfortable nostalgia. Staring down your own mortality will force you to re-examine your self-worth, especially in the eyes of others.

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That there is a landscape of love in these darkly hidden specks if I would only get my head out of my ass!

But I know this is a human experience, grieving the relationships that seemingly expired long before one party was ready to lose. No one wants to be the one left behind.

Note- Instead of going back to therapy, I’ll create a dumb, overdramatized burning ritual to fully let go of those I can’t hold onto. That’ll work, right?