As it says in my profile, I’m a proponent of vulnerabilityism. I push myself to talk about things that are uncomfortable for me to talk about because I think it’s important if you want to heal.
But I don’t talk about my mom enough.
It’s hard for me to tell how much my depression has to do with my mom’s passing. I don’t have many specific incidents I regret when it comes to my mom. I was able to say goodbye, I spent lots of time with her, we had a good relationship.
My mom had metastatic breast cancer for almost a decade. It was in remission for a lot of that time, but it always loomed. I remember 2nd grade I had a habit of sitting in a corner during recess staring at a wall and thinking about her illness, among other things. I recognized at the time that it was probably a cry for help. I’d get bummed out when recess ended because I wanted to keep brooding.
When her cancer came out of remission, I didn’t recognize what it meant. It was 2-3 years before she passed. But those years were mostly good. She kept doing treatments, none of which worked well enough, and during that time we were able to go spend a lot of time together. She once told me she was jealous of the playful relationship I had with my dad, and I told her how much better of a relationship I thought I had with her, to the extent it almost made me feel bad for my dad. She was able to enjoy life,
Then the last 3 months happened.
She wasn’t able to walk on her own anymore. The cancer spread to her skin, and it hurt all the time. Her voice changed drastically, and she sounded like Mr Hanky. Apparently she had so many tumors in her brain, they stopped counting. Triple digits. The hardest thing I’ve ever done was tell my brother that she might not make it to Christmas. That was around the time I was told to say goodbye.
This was the 2nd hardest thing I’ve ever done. I wrote it down to try and make it easier, but I still uncontrollably sobbed.
After I said goodbye, she said “I thought you always hated me.”
There’s a couple reasons she could’ve said that. My dad says she was trying to get me to say “I love you” which I did right after. My therapist said that it was something she only started thinking once she was losing her mind. I think she might’ve been making a joke. Like I said, losing her mind.
The idea that it’s true is too horrible for me to believe.
My mom was the strongest person I’ve ever known. She was a rock star. Literally, she played guitar in a band with stage 4 cancer. I keep trying to explain ways she was amazing, but I feel like everything I say isn’t doing her justice. I miss her a lot.
Related tangent: back in preschool, I was friends with two twins who were a year older than me. We were very close, and when they moved out of kindergarten, I was lonely for a long time. When I was younger, I had the insight that my relationship with them was so rewarding, that I didn’t bother making more friends, and my skill in developing friends was stunted as a result. This doesn’t really make sense, with hindsight reminding me that I did have more friends than them growing up.
The same concept could apply to my relationship with my mom. I was so dependent on her for emotional support, when I lost her, I couldn’t cope. And so I broke. For a while I tried pushing her role onto my dad and trying to get from him what I got from her, but that was just frustrating and not possible. He wasn’t her.
This is just scratching the surface. There’s more that happened, and more to talk about. But I’m done for now.
Also my dad kicked me out of the house I live with my grandma now ok bye.
My mom
Angry, my mom is holding onto my inheritance
