May 18, 2020

I didn’t realize how comfortable the silence was until there wasn’t any.

Grandma’s breast cancer surgery is next week.

The PT and OT are both stressing the same thing — eat, eat, rest, exercise, get stronger, eat, eat — the surgery is going to set her back, they all remind me. The twisted ankle a week ago already set her back. Now we’ve got 10 days. 10 days. To get her as strong as she can be. Eating as much as she can, every day. Drinking those nasty protein drinks (I’m going to mix it up as a milk shake, I think she’ll like that.) This is the part (like every other part) that comes in where I so badly wish I could just.. assume her body. I wish I could do it for her. Wish I could fight the stupid cancer, feel the aching pain, lie awake through the sleepless nights. Because I’d like to believe that maybe if I was her, I could do it better? I would do it better, because I love her, and I’m doing it for her? It doesn’t work like that, it never will. I should move away from that thought.

In lighter, and truly beautiful news, she’s started smiling more. And by more I mean at all. Things, at least in the last few days, are feeling easier between us. We understand. We’ve talked out and fought about all the kinks. And yes there are still some, many if I think hard. Maybe I’ve been smoking more, maybe I’m just too exhausted to care about some of them. Who knows what it is.. All I know is I’ve been making jokes with her and seeing her crack a smile a few times a day. I realize now I wasn’t joking before. Which is unlike me. I always joke. I always try to fit something in, at some point in the conversation, because I love to see people laugh. I love when I know someone is relaxed around me, and they laugh, and then I laugh, and it just feels good. And lately she’s laughed. I’ve laughed, too.

I’d say she’s trying more. Or at least has been for a week or so now, which is a long streak. I recognize that there are good days and there are bad days, and before I think I always thought there were a lot of bad days and seldom good days, but now it feels like the scales are shifting just enough that even the bad days have a little bit of the energy and attitude of the good days mixed in. Which is good to see.

I also realize now how much I casted my own vision on the situation, diagnosing it as being as terrible as how I immediately saw it, but I wasn’t giving myself the time to slow down and see it. I know that’s not a fair thing to say to myself, so I’ll rationalize it by adding that I did the best with the information I had. I shouldn’t have lost my cool. I shouldn’t have yelled. I shouldn’t have been a monster and reminded everyone that I didn’t HAVE to be here, I don’t HAVE to be doing it so the least everyone else could be doing, including gma, is try to make the situation better. But it felt like we were wallowing and wallowing is something I tend to do and get wrapped up with doing and that’s why I haven’t moved on with so many other issues in my life, because I just keep letting it consume me. I don’t know where I’m going with this.

Anyway, I’m looking for online writing work. It’s frustrating because I quit my job with the intention of being here and holding myself accountable to a schedule I can manage and that will allow for a bit of seperation and independence. But now we’re on a decent streak, and the surgery is coming, and she is like my baby egg that I must keep safe and nurture and grow into a strong bird before next Thursday. I know I cannot eat, exercise and rest for her, but damn I wish I could. Because I’m going to basically do what I was doing before: try to get her to eat at any chance I get (there are tricks to this, and I have mastered some, and perhaps that is why I am not so easily frustrated with this part,) get her to exercise by reminding her to do it (which she would typically scoff at but is now doing by herself sometimes), and rest (which I can understand being hard with the anxieties but all the meds + the soothing music + the me reading to her before bed + whatever else can only go so far.)

I also think it would be fun to note that every single graf here (besides the first one,) I intended it to be a graf solely about ME. About personal news going on in my life. Yet none of them actually ended up being that. Idk, food for thought.

What I was going to say above was — I’m looking for online writing work. Which is frustrating so far. But I do need to find something, so if there are any suggestions any of the 5 people reading this may have, would love to pick your brain.

Anyway, let’s all try to take it easy. I know I need to. I just need to breatheeeeee bitch. Let life be life. Let birds be birds, let eggs be eggs.