mother's day is coming up

Hey everyone. It's Friday and I kind of missed a few Sundays, but I'm here now. Ready? Here we go.

After only 3 months since mom's passing, dad's already dating someone else. Her name is Jan and I feel like I already know too much about Jan without actually having met Jan yet. The thing is, Dorian already had to eat out with her and dad, and dad said he'd take me out to dinner too (he didn't mention Jan because he hasn't mentioned Jan at all to me yet. He probably doesn't think I know about her yet.) But the thing is, the next time I come home is next week for Mother's Day. I'm not sure if I want to meet Jan on Mother's Day weekend, and when I say I'm not sure, I mean I'm definitely sure.

Mother's Day is looming and I'm just worried about my mental health in this upcoming week. Last year, I had pneumonia at this time and couldn't go home for Mother's Day. I remember calling mom about it and feeling bad but she told me that it was alright because "we love each other." Well, that was the last mother's day we could have spent together. She's not here anymore, but I still know we love each other.

People don't get how hard it is to get up every day. I have to deal with everyone else's actions while trying to grieve at the same time. I'm trying to deal with Jan's existence as well as other such issues. I graduate in about a month.

I'm tired of dealing with things. I feel like I'm back in high school facing my senior graduation. I was really tired of everything then too.

I just wanted to drop in and talk a little, but now I'm done for tonight.

Have a great week.

Good things & bad things

Hey, everyone. It's not Sunday, but I'm in a place to talk, so I'm going to. Ready? Here we go.

I'm feeling very low right now, but before I discuss that, let me make an announcement. This Monday I received the email that I was accepted into the teaching program I wanted to be in. That means, I will be moving to Japan in July. This is a highly competitive program and I am proud to have been selected for it.

I've been running around all week to get more paperwork done. I swear, it never ends. It's okay after I get it done though because I feel very accomplished. I tell myself, with every step I take, I become more of an adult. I mean, I technically am an adult, but sometimes I feel very small.

I've felt stronger since Spring started, but Easter has me feeling pretty low. Typically it's one of my favorite holidays because of the surplus bunny stuffed animals and my favorite type of chocolate being on the shelf. However, it's also the first big holiday without my mom. I know that not everyone celebrates Easter, but my family always has a family reunion at my grandparent's house.

The last time we had a family reunion, my mom was still with us. I sat next to her at the table. I didn't know that that night she would fall and then the next day all the migraines would start and her health would decline. I didn't know and now here I am. Last year at this time my mom was still alive. I was looking at her pictures on facebook and there's one of her smiling from April 3rd.

I've said it a thousand times, but it's not fair. Since I've had a couple of good weeks, I feel like people expect me to be okay all the time now. Since I'm not actively crying in front of anyone, I feel like I'm expected to be alright. I'm really not okay. I'm miserable today. My emotions manifest themselves poorly too. I constantly think I'm annoying and whiny and I'll mention something about myself and it'll seem like I need my ego boosted, but really I just want a confirmation that I'm not garbage because I feel like I am a lot. And now I feel bad for needing that and I just keep telling myself that yes, I am garbage.

I know I'm not garbage, but it's hard to not feel like trash.

I was asked to be a panelist for my school's prospective student day, and everything was fine until it was mentioned that everyone was an Honor's student. I didn't do honors. I said I would before school started this year, but I didn't do it. It's not that I couldn't do it academically, I've made the Dean's list 9 times, but I started this school year with the knowledge that my mom was probably going to pass sometime this year. Of course I wasn't going to do that to myself. But it's still embarrassing to be in a position where you could've done honors and you didn't and now you're surrounded by people who did. And it's not that it's too hard for me to do, it's that my mother literally died and I would've had to drop it winter term anyway because I don't even know how I made it through winter term. I somehow got straight A's even though I was miserable every day.

I guess I'm just pissed that I feel inadequate even though I'm doing the best I can. But at the same time, I ask myself, "Am I doing the best I can?" Probably not. I should try harder. I always manage to make everyone else in the vicinity feel bad too. I feel like a constant burden to everyone around me.

What would really piss me off is if people thought I had it easy. I suppose that's childish to say, but just because I'm good at something doesn't mean it's easy necessarily. Yes, I have a job after graduation. Yes, I'm doing well academically. BUT my mother DIED. This is the same feeling I had in earlier posts where I said that I was doing fine, but I wasn't doing fine. You might say, no one is going to think you have it easy! But my little sister was told by her friends that they were jealous of her because she was only taking two classes in college because she had to drop two-three because mom died.

I'm just tired and sad and I have a lot of things coming up that I need to do. I have a presentation next Friday, and after that a hearing for my recital, and another admitted students day, more paperwork and who knows what else.

Have a great week.

Nights

Hey, everyone. I actually remembered to continue to post. Let's see if I can keep this up. Ready? Here we go.

Every since my mom passed away, I'm scared of falling asleep. My siblings have been having problems sleeping as well, but I don't think it's from fear. I'm always terrified that if I fall asleep, I won't wake up. Lately, I've been having anxiety attacks daily, if not more than once a day. It's exhausting to be afraid all the time.

I know that I have nothing to be afraid of, but my mom's cancer seemed so sudden and after two years she passed. The moment we found out about the diagnosis, we knew that we didn't have much time left together. That sort of thing is terrifying to me.

When I type this, it seems silly to be afraid of things, but I can't help myself when I wake up in the middle of the night and suddenly I'm afraid to close my eyes. I don't understand it, but I know where it comes from. Whenever I drive long distances, I have anxiety attacks too. That's because my car kept stalling in the middle of the highway. It's finally fixed now, (it had an ignition problem and the battery was low), but I can't stop the lingering fear. As soon as I sit in my car, I feel nauseous and light-headed.

I wish I was a stronger person. I may have gotten straight A's for Winter Term, but my anxiety is very disabling right now. I'm concerned about being able to function next year. I hope that it doesn't keep getting in the way and that'll go away soon.

Mom died in front of my eyes and it was extremely traumatic for me. I'm glad I was there. It was very painful, but I'm glad I was there for her in those last moments, but the image is seared into my brain and I'm afraid of dying. I'm also just very tired, very very tired.

I'm going to stop this here, but yeah, I'm tired and I'm very tired of being afraid of everything.

Have a great week.

My last term

Hey, everyone.

I haven't posted since my mom passed two months ago. I feel like I've been in a fog and I'm not sure how I got through these months. I decided to take up blogging again, or at least I tell myself that I will. Last night, I was laying in bed and I thought that I should make this post.

I mentioned in an earlier post that someday I would look back on these years and see all the holes from when I didn't blog. I posted the following quote March 11, 2013, a little over two years ago:

I haven't been blogging because this is the major event my life is circling about right now. I don't know if I can talk about it here, so I've stayed away so I wouldn't be tempted, but now when I think about it, it may be the most important thing to document. When I look back at this blog someday, I'll see these holes and I'll remember what happened at this time, but I think it's good to remember how I emotionally felt on this afternoon.

Well, I never did get back into blogging and I think part of it was a self-defense mechanism. I didn't want to reflect on what was happening. I tried to be hopeful and pretend like my mother wasn't dying. I wrote plenty of quick posts on my tumblr, but those are now buried in my archive. If I ever want to relive those moments, I can dig them up again. But here there will always be two years missing of my life. That's fine. They were important, but they were also very sad. It's hard for me to be patient with myself. I even told my therapist that I didn't know if I had the right to be sad. I do, my mother died, but I'm still not sure. 

I did some pretty mean things to myself these past couple of months. I only took a week and a half off from school. I refused to set my midterm back and had it the following Monday after I returned to school on Tuesday. The week following that was the first week of February and coincidentally my birthday week and the week we found out about mom's cancer two years ago. That weekend, I had a job interview. They asked me how I would handle my mother's illness overseas. I told them that she'd passed away last month and then after the interview I beat myself up for answering so poorly. I didn't give myself a break from work. I made myself get up at 6:30 am every day for work even though I quite literally hated myself. I refused to take any offers for time off. I told myself that I should at least be able to do this much. Mom would have wanted me to continue. 

But would she have? Mom knew this was going to be hard. That's why she didn't want me to sing at the funeral. So I didn't sing at her funeral. I sang a duet at her burial with my sister. I don't know how I did any of this. I cried for a few minutes after she passed, and then I went numb and couldn't cry anymore. I cried later that night and then the next morning I got up at 9 am to write her obituary. That week my sisters and I planned her funeral and then it happened and we buried her and left. The day after we sorted through her clothes, and then we sorted through her jewelry. I don't know how we did any of this. I don't know how I got three A-'s and one A for my finals for Winter Term. People told me I was very strong, but I wasn't very strong at all. Yet, there's a lot of times where I told myself I am strong, but that's only when I'm feeling better. 

There were some weeks where my mood was so dark, that I hated everything about myself. The first time I met with my therapist she asked me the normal questions like, "Do you have suicidal thoughts? Or thoughts of hurting yourself?" You know, that normal sort of thing. I told her no because that's not what my mom would have wanted. I held onto that thought so even when I was in my darkest places, I knew that I would see the other side of it. It was not easy and I may have eaten too much junk food to spite myself, but I emerged from that and here I am. The first couple of warm days were the most precious days I have ever felt. It felt like I was being washed with light. I have never felt so peaceful as when I was walking in the sunlight for the first time in months. I said to myself, "Mom, I'm going to be okay." Of course, I had moments a few days later where I felt sad and I didn't know how I was going to keep going without my mom, but even now I have a feeling that I will be okay. 

I've had lots of dreams about my mom, and by lots I mean about three or four. The first dream I had with her in it was the most precious dream. We were sitting in my parents' bedroom and there was the hospital bed that we rented during Christmas break. She was sitting at the head of it on the edge. She was wearing her ruffled black, brown, and cream shirt. In this dream, we both acknowledged that she had already passed. She told me that there were ten chairs that were filled with people who had gone before, and that it had been amazing. She also told me that she was okay. She was fine. I believed her because she looked like she had before she had been sick. My mom is okay now. She told me. I still miss her though. I woke up crying. 

It occurred to me last night that four years ago at this time, I would have never pictured myself in the position I am in now.  At this time four years ago I was finishing up with high school. I was dealing with a huge shift in my life and I was very introspective. The introspective side of me was lost when I first got into college. Instead, when I read through those posts, I only see a very shallow side of myself. I was excited, and I was only going to the motions with my blog.

One particular passage stood out to me. It's cheesy and definitely written by a high schooler, but I wanted to share it. It's from May 22, 2011:

The school has said goodbye to us, like it does all seniors. It's been saying goodbye all year, and we've finally decided to listen to it and respond.

You know what? Last years seniors are but a quiet memory, and the years before are nearly nonexistent. We're the same. This freshmen class never really knew us, just like I never really knew my seniors. We're all eagerly straining for our time, like dogs on a leash, and when the leash snaps, we're left tumbling out of control into places we could never have imagined. College, life, whatever you're doing, we've been cut off and we're stumbling alone, but at least we're stumbling. This is the part of your life that you have to plunge into by yourself. In the end, you're making your own decisions. Sure, it's scary as hell, but we're doing it.

Who are we?

Hah, we thought we'd know by the end of high school, but really, we're just starting out. Will we ever know? Probably not. We constantly morph.

I'm entering my final Spring term tomorrow, and I still don't know who I am. I'm reevaluating myself and learning to live without my mom. I have a feeling these next couple of months will be rough. I'll have my senior recital and my senior art show and my mom won't be there to cheer me on. I will search for her face in the crowd, and she will not be there. It seems weird that I will be finishing college without her, when we started the whole process together. My mom is the one that took me to college visit days and the one that drove me to my college scholarship auditions. Her absence is felt every day of my life. There is not a day where I think that I would not like to call her to tell her about something. It's hard to deal with. It's hard to know she's gone. My professor told me at my final that he was moved by the work I'd done this semester. I still don't think I did enough, I could have done more. Well, I probably couldn't have when the circumstances, but if my mom was still alive, everything would be different.

I suppose that's the way I just have to look at life. If mom was here still everything would be different. But she's not, so I have to live with what I have. My mom's death was without reason. It was senseless, it was cruel, it was too soon. There was nothing good about it, so when people tell me that she is no longer in pain, I just want to tell them that there was no reason for my mom to die. There was no reason to it at all. Those comments only help them feel better about comforting me. There was no reason. She should still be here. I can't accept fully that she's not, but I'm trying. 

I'm going to end this post here, as it's gone rather long. I will try to start keeping to a posting schedule. Until next time.

Have a great week. 

1/19/15

My mom died yesterday. I was there. I stroked her hair. I watched her go.
It was peaceful, and I know she was so sick and so tired from fighting for so long, but I still want her here with me.
I keep looking around my house at all the empty spaces. I'm never going to talk to her again. I can't call her anymore. She's never going to pick up the phone. She'll never walk through the front door. I won't see her outside gardening or filling up the birdseed. She's gone somewhere very far away. Maybe not as far, but somewhere unreachable. I feel very lost. I want to go home even though I am home. Mom was home. Mom's gone.

hospice notice

Today I came home from school for the weekend and saw the Hospice notice on the fridge. It had my mom's doctor on it and the various workers like a spiritual worker and a social worker. You know, everything feels real at moments like that, but most of the time it feels surreal. I still can't wrap my mind around all of this. I can't even begin to comprehend that my mom is going to be gone soon. I don't understand, and I feel so frustrated and I'm just so sad all the time.

I finally broke and told another professor about my mom. I need to talk to the Dean so they can do the thing when people are sick or have some issue and they send out a notice to the professors so they know the situation. That way, I won't have to sit and stare at an email for forever and feel guilty about sending it. I feel so terrible whenever I give in and let people know how bad things are.  I'm perfectly justified in feeling the way I do, but since it feels surreal, I don't believe it's actually happening, and I just can't even explain it.

Tonight I'm sad because the Hospice notice made it Real again. I'm really scared that in a couple of years I won't remember her voice, or I won't be able to see her face clearly in my mind. In a couple years I'll be looking at these last pictures my Aunt has been taking of her and it'll all seem so faraway. Or will it? What happens? How do people do this? How do people cope with this? I'm not coping well.

I'm so upset over small things. Like, when I was a kid I remember friends saying, "Oh yeah, my grandma/grandpa died before I was born, so I didn't even know them." And it wasn't important to them and I just think that if I ever have kids, they won't know about their grandmother and as much as I tell them about her, she'll just be an abstract idea. These are just little things I can't change, but I'm just so upset thinking that in a couple years some of this will be smoothed over, because I just feel so raw right now. I don't want to forget things. I'm scared of forgetting things. I'm just so sad and so scared.

I mostly talk to myself nowadays, instead of posting my thoughts here. I don't speak aloud or anything, I just talk while I'm brushing my teeth or washing my face. I talk myself into the shower and I talk myself out. But all of the talk is the same and all of it could have gone here, but I kept it to myself instead, because if I write it then it's permanent and it's There, and I can't get rid of it anymore.

I'm losing my mom to cancer.

And everyday I am sad.

I chose to stop posting in this blog for a very long time, or at least it seemed like a long time, but really it's only been since May. A year ago is when all of this started, and a year goes by so fast, and a year can change everything.

While I was in Japan, every other week I received some sort of Bad News. Then there was a Big Emergency, and all of this weighed on me, and I decided to come back at the end of the semester. Thinking back on it now, I'm very glad I did come back, even though there were times when I was unsure.

I guess none of this was Real to me. It wasn't Real because everyone was hopeful, or at least appeared that way before I left for Japan. Nothing was Real until I came back and I saw my mom losing weight, her hair, her speech. Even still, it didn't hit me until I found out about the bone cancer.

I don't know when it was that I first saw the effects of bone cancer on the internet. Lots of people my age and younger think that the effects of illness on the body is interesting, or cool, so they'll post things like 'the effects of bone cancer' and I remember seeing a messed up picture of a skull and feeling indifferent. But I now that I know things are happening to a person I love very dearly, it's taken that to a whole new level. It's not just some picture anymore. It's Real.

And now that it's Real, I get angry. I'm not angry at the universe or God or whatever, like people expect people like me to be. I feel like I'm supposed to blame everything and anyone and some higher power, but mostly I'm just angry because my mom will never see grandchildren, or the grand canyon, or the Northern Lights, and it's Not Fair.

I'm angry that people romanticize suffering and pain. I'm angry that books like The Fault in Our Stars exist. Cancer isn't quirky. It isn't a cute trait. It's not romantic. It's not beautiful. It's not something you use as a plot device. Cancer is sitting on your floor and crying into a pillow so your suitemates don't hear. Cancer is going on vacation and then going to the ER instead of shopping. Cancer is feeling everything that makes up your entire world shift. Cancer is Sad.

I'm angry at my own weakness and my inability to do anything. All I can do is go to school every day, and when I can't manage that I feel like I'm abusing my sadness, or that I'm letting it win. I got straight A's last semester, but my personal life is a mess. But it's not a mess, because I have great friends and I get up every day and go to work and school and come back and clean pet cages and socialize and smile, and it all looks amazing and great, and then someone will say something and I'll freeze because for some reason it makes me Sad and then I push it away only for it to come back later when I am alone.

I was in my drawing class about three weeks ago and a song came on over pandora and for some reason, my mood plummeted and all I could think about was being Sad and I left. And then I was guilty and angry at myself for not being able to hold it in, and that I had been doing so well and I had managed to nearly make it through the entire semester without missing a class.

When we drove back from our vacation today, my mom apologized to us for "messing up the vacation" and no matter what we said she still blamed herself. Then she told us to keep going on vacation as a family and to continue family traditions and she started crying because she was implying she wouldn't be there. The thought of her not being with us invokes a pain I can't even being to explain. There just aren't words.

I remember when I was a little kid and I was asking about God and my mom told me that God loved us so much that we can't even begin to imagine. I remember being surprised because how could a love greater than the one I felt for my family exist. How could a large, enveloping love exist outside of the one I already felt? I've had friends tell me that being religious makes it easier, because we know that they really aren't gone, but in truth, it doesn't make it easier, because when she's gone, I'm going to want a hug, or to hear her voice, or go to places and eat at silly small riverside restaurants together, and I won't be able to do that.

People say that high school or college are the best years of your life, and I don't believe that, but it's even harder to believe that I'll ever have 'the best years of my life' when my mom won't be around to share them with me. It's Not Fair.

Every day I am sad, and every day I grieve.