Not Dealing With It...

Some days I feel like I can face anything. Even on the more difficult days, I know that whatever is going on, whatever monsters are breathing down my neck, nothing will stop me. Even if they slow me down or knock me over, I will get back up because that's what I do. I get up. I deal with it.

My mom has breast cancer. I haven't talked about it much because, well, I can't deal with it. Tomorrow she goes in to have both breasts removed and I can't deal with it. She won't have to do chemo or radiation like I did...but I'm still not dealing with it. I can't. I don't know how.

When I was pregnant with my daughter and my husband crawled into a bottle, my mom swooped in and gave me support. We had been distant from each other for a very long time, but in an instant, the gap was closed. I largely had to go through my pregnancy alone, but I had my mother back. Then as breast cancer came for me a few months later, there she was again. The mom I was always at odds with or felt misunderstood by became my rock. She became my connection to survival and sanity. She put herself in financial and marital strain to help me through. She has been supportive in my divorce and my decision to do Krav Maga because she wants me to be happy and she wants to see me thrive.

I can't deal with this. I just can't deal with this. It hurts too much. It scares me too much. And there's this crazy, irrational part of my brain that wonders if the strain of helping me through my cancer somehow lead to her cancer. It's not uncommon to hear of a woman getting breast cancer years after it happened to her mother but this...this is weird. This is unsettling and I just can't process it. There is nothing I can do for her and there is no way I can be there at the hospital so far away to wait in agony while she undergoes the same painful surgery I had to endure. Maybe if I was there, maybe if I could hold her hand, I could process it. Maybe I could smile at her the way she smiles at me and tell her that it's alright because I've been there and I know. But here I am, in the dark, all alone, knowing that tomorrow my mother will be butchered and there is nothing I can do.

Some things as it turns out, are beyond my ability to deal with.