Why I hated 2016 – ProseBox

In my life, I have caught a lot of shit from people because I kept saying 2016 was the worst year of my life. I get told “Buck up little camper – it ain’t all bad” sort of crap.

January – My adopted ‘father’ died. He was my best friend’s father, but her family took me in when I went to college. They have been a part of my life for 17 years; they took me into their home, included me in their family when mine was a 6-hour flight away. Then I became a teacher, and both of my friend’s parents were teachers – in fact, I was hired at the school he retired from. I worked with his friends, one of them became one of my best friends. And when he passed, I was asked to let them know. His passing hurt, but I knew he wasn’t hurting anymore, so I was sort of okay. But it was the knowledge that his passing hurt people that I love dearly, that my best friend’s little girl, lost her only grandfather

March – We put my corgi to sleep. We don’t know what happened, but he became paralyzed from the neck down, and he couldn’t breathe. And I don’t want to talk about it.

May – My mother ended up in the hospital in so much pain she couldn’t even breath. She had to have emergency surgery, which took longer because of scar tissue from surgery when my brother was born. Then my mother was diagnosed with cancer – bladder cancer in a kidney… Very aggressive cancer, but it was caught early enough the doctors believed they could do something about it.

June – My father’s heart just stopped. It was not a heart attack according to his doctors – his heart just would stop beating. He ended up in the hospital for emergency surgery to ‘install’ a pacemaker. So far, that seemed to be working.

My mother spent the summer going through chemo – being poisoned so that her body wouldn’t kill her. All this to prep for surgery in September.

September – My mother had surgery to remove her infected kidney.

October – My uncle, my mother’s older brother whom I adore, came to visit with my aunt and my mother’s sister. My aunt (uncle’s wife) pulled me aside to tell me that my uncle had cancer and that she was not sure that he was going to tell everyone, but she wanted me to know because she knew how close we were and knew that when he did tell my mother, my mother would need the support. He has the same cancer as my mother, only more advanced, and on his “good” kidney. His other kidney is damaged from having polio as a child.

November – My uncle had surgery to remove his kidney – and there is a 90% chance he is going to be on daily dialysis for the rest of his life. As of writing this today, his doctors are still not sure what is going to happen.

On top of all of this, I have depression. I am so far down the rabbit hole of not okay, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I am not on medication, I don’t want to go back on medication – it sort of helped, but I also didn’t give a flying fuck about anything.

I went off the medication, and got a corgi…

Now, a lot of the people telling me to “buck up” don’t know this because they don’t want to hear about what is going on in my life.

I am going to start writing again – but just for myself, I think. This place is not OD, and I don’t have any friends here. I am not sure what I am doing at all with this, but I need to get some of the darkness out of my head so that maybe I can start to see some way out of this.