#to add insult to injury i woke up ill this morning as well as feeling run down and melancholic wooo

[pricetagged]

Reader who's shuffling towards their winter break, exhausted, malaised. The beginnings of a flu are catching in your throat, nose blocked up and head-heavy. Too overtired to notice the way things have been moving around your apartment

—scratches around the locks, food gone from the fridge, an extra cup sitting in the drying rack—

It's only when you finally reach Friday night, with the time and the promise of a lie-in on Saturday, that you start to feel a prickling on your neck. Shaking it off, you take a hot shower, steam furling and opening up your congested nose. Hot water spraying over your aching muscles—

—except

The shampoo is almost used up. The bathroom was already slightly damp when you got in.

When you reach for the towel, it's already wet. Hastily folded over the rack, and smelling like you but more—

The lights go out as you're staring at your stunned face in the steam-hazed mirror.

[alexheathen]

Growths

This is the story of my life, from the perspective of my relationship with my mother and her 13 years with cancer. I’ve posted bits and pieces of it before, but I felt like I could finally write it, and anon asked, so here it is. Warning: long as fuck.

The experience of my mother’s illness is central to my biography, without a doubt. Our relationship was incredibly close. I am the firstborn son in my family, so I suppose it was inevitable. She read to me almost every night when I was little: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Once and Future King, and then Winnie the Pooh after the epic fantasy well dried up. I was discouraged from sports and imbued with the generalized fear/caution many of us 90’s kids seemed to get growing up. In fewer words, I was super nerdy, and I 100% had mom to blame. 

For much of her life, my mom’s best friend was her older sister, Patricia, or Pat, for short. Pat received her first breast cancer diagnosis in 1993, fairly late in the tumor’s development. Treatment was aggressive, as it tends to be on the first go round - both breasts removed and intensive chemotherapy. Still, the disease progressed and eventually spread to her ovaries; she died in 1995 due to complications from chemo (treatment is inevitably worse than disease when we talk about cancer). My mother was devastated, and I was five years old and confused. Why was everyone crying? What happened? When my grandma told me my aunt was just sleeping, mom scolded her for lying to me. “She’s gone to heaven,” mom said, “and she’s not coming back.” The Lion King came out that year, and they played “The Circle of Life” over her memorial slideshow at the wake. A wake that was held at the high school I would attend, over ten years later. My sophomore English teacher was the woman who had been hired to replace my aunt after she died, and she passed along one of my aunt’s annotated books, which she had kept all those years. That was a very spooky day.

Breast cancer haunts my family; the genetic specter of the BRCA1 mutation looms large in my family tree, comorbid with clinical depression. My grandmother had two run ins with it, and though she only had a double mastectomy as treatment, she lived well into her eighties. In addition to my aunt, there is a cemetery of second cousins and great aunts I never met. Among the women of my generation, getting tested for the gene mutation is something of a rite of passage. 

My mom’s first diagnosis was in April of 2002. Being a bookish and political child, I had been rocked by 9/11 the year before: the day after the attack I threw up on the bus and mom had taken me home. In less than a year, mortality entered my life, first on a grand scale, and then on a very personal one. My schoolwork suffered and what social life I had withered, since I relied on my mom to arrange it. As is often the case, I withdrew into books and videogames. In hindsight, I realize I was profoundly depressed, but as the oldest I took it upon myself to make sure no one worried about me - this was the only way I had control of my situation. 

Fearing the swift and painful demise of her sister, my mother opted for an even more aggressive course of treatment - severe chemotherapy, the removal of both breasts and her uterus. In those days, our house was a still as a crypt. Every day, I would come home from school afraid she had died while I was gone. Many afternoons were spent sneaking into my parents bedroom to make sure she was still breathing, then falling into my own bed to weep or scream into the pillow before falling into an uneasy sleep. I have distinct memories of recurring nightmares from this time of my life, where my soul would leave my body and float around my house, completely out of my control.

This relatively brief period, less than a year, would define my adolescence. Even after her disease had gone into remission, I did my best to make sure mom had no cause to worry, even as my grades slipped in and out of dire straits. I was determined to make sure my parents had no cause to worry about me being “one of the bad kids" and I had also been marked by the unresolved experience of my mother’s illness, so I was indelibly separated from most of my peers. As a result, I missed out on a lot of teenage degeneracy, and most of the developmental milestones of that period as well. I struggled to separate myself from my parents. Teenage mawkishness was made worse by trauma. I had hoped college would be a clean break; in ways it was and in ways it wasn’t. 

The summer of my senior year of highschool my mom received her second breast cancer diagnosis. This time, however, I at least had some agency. I made myself useful as I could around the house, cleaning and mowing the lawn, and I drove my mom to and from her chemotherapy appointments. When I left in the fall, she still had three more months of treatment to go, but the fear of death was not present as it was the first time. Separated from the events of my mother’s illness, I was able to use it as a motivation instead of a burden for the first time in my life. I excelled my first year of college - three semesters on the honor, and I won an iPad from the freshman writing competition. I wrote the winning essay the night before it was due, after smoking heavily. It was supposed to have been a work memoir, but I hadn’t worked much at that point, so I made up a job at Barnes and Noble and wrote most of the essay about taking care of my mother that summer. In a small way, I hated myself for it - in high school I always resented the kids who wrote sob stories to win contests while I proudly suffered in silence.

By junior year, however, I was severely depressed again, as I moved off of campus and lost my social support network. There was a semester I missed half of the classes in two courses, having become deeply confused about what I wanted from life and entered into existential catatonia. Still, I didn’t seek help, beyond smoking cigarettes, weed and taking the occasional acid trip. This turned around a bit, fall of my senior year, when I had my strongest experiences of friendship and creativity, and began to study mysticism and spirituality, but it was short-lived.

Come January of 2013, suspicious dark spots appeared on one of mom’s regularly scheduled MRI’s. The doctors waffled back and forth over whether or not it was cancer; but I think we all knew. The day my mother called to tell me it was officially back, I had spent the morning chanting Om Mani Padme Hum and had found a unique tranquility, like a warm green sun was holding my heart. I met that devastating phone call with grace and tranquility - and then had it decimated over the coming months. 

I could barely keep it together to deal with school - I was okay in class but I didn’t have the presence of mind to work on assignments. As much as I could afford to, I smoked weed - which wasn’t very much - I was unemployed and my dad was tightening the purse strings to encourage me to look for work. One day, stoned, desperate, and staring down finals feeling completely helpless, I shaved my head and eyebrows, hoping to elicit some sympathy/be forced into talking about my dire situation. And it worked - three of my four professors passed me, to some degree or another, even though I either turned in the final essays late or not at all. The only one that didn’t, amusingly enough, was a 100-level course I had put off until the end of my degree - “Honors 105: Religious Worldviews and Ethical Perspectives.” I failed that course twice and didn’t graduate because of it. 

My family didn’t know I had shaved my head; when my mother came to graduation she was deeply disturbed by it, because it was an explicit reminder of the impact her illness had on me. The night before graduation, I smoked the last bit of resin in my bowl and went into uneasy sleep. I woke up an hour late the next morning, threw on some jeans and a t-shirt, grabbed my cap and gown and ran for the bus. I didn’t have time to go to the bathroom, so I ended up shitting in the bushes in front of Soldier’s Field, Chicago, which was near where the ceremony was held. I eventually made it; mom was pissed, dad was confused, and my middle sister, I would later find out, was going through her own mental health troubles.

I should’ve moved home immediately, but I spent June through August in another existential catatonia. I was supposed to be looking for jobs; I read manga, watched Super Sentai, drank beer and smoked cigarettes. In September my dad came in a moving van to take me home; the night before we left he parked in a grocery store parking lot, and to add insult to injury, it got impounded and he had to pay $500 to get it out. 

I spent the rest of 2013 and most of 2014 in near catatonia again, playing shit loads of video games - I remember playing Dishonored, Deus Ex HR, and Dark Souls in particular. I also remember playing Borderlands every damn day for a month when they were doing a “win a million dollars!” promo. My sister was about to graduate high school, had blue hair and was trying on being a lesbian. We became really close during this time, sneaking around to smoke cigarettes and supporting each other through our misery. I also got really close to my mom; sometimes we would spend whole mornings talking over coffee, both feeling guilty over the pain we had caused each other. 

I eventually started seeing a therapist and taking 20mg of Lexapro daily, and finally I got the monkey off my back. I found a job, first working in a warehouse, and then a bank. Mom’s condition worsened, of course. You don’t survive a third diagnosis, so the chemotherapy she was taking was only to extend her life bit by bit. April of 2015, she was on so many fucking drugs she was getting loopy, culminating in her telling me “You were the beginning of the misery in my life,” while I was putting away the dishes one night. I brushed it off, but when I was alone I completely lost it, just burst into tears, and I confronted her, and she was shocked at her own behavior. She had no explanation. She was hospitalized for the last week of April, they recalibrated her meds, and she entered hospice care in May.

She lived for another six months, until October 15th, 2015. I got reassigned at the bank to one of the most hellish, tedious jobs I’ve ever experienced. During lunch I would go out, guiltily smoke cigarettes and contemplate jumping off the parking garage. I was catastrophically lonely August through September.

The night mom died was a Friday. I had gone to pick up some hard cider after worked - Rhinegeist Red. The day before, she had gone to the clinic where she received her chemo and said goodbye to all the technicians - some of these people she had known for ten years. I have to imagine those are some of the most peculiar friendships in all of human experience. She and dad also went to say goodbye to the neighbors from the house I grew up in. Dad was surprised that night - she seemed stronger than she had in months. This “golden day” is apparently typical for people in hospice care.

Friday morning, mom had started to have trouble breathing around 10:00 am. She just couldn’t catch her breath, and she was in a lot of pain. The hospice nurse came by and upped her morphine dosage, and told my father to continue to administer another dose every half hour. 

When I came home, it seemed like the house was empty. I put my cider on the kitchen table, and suddenly the bathroom door opened. Mom had braced herself against the door frame; dad was holding her up. As he carried her into the kitchen, I saw death like I never had before.

My mother’s left eye was cast toward heaven. The right one wobbled ghoulishly in its socket. Her skin was the color of old glue. Her eyes had been off kilter for a few weeks - somewhere a tumor was interfering with her ocular nerve - but the pallor was new.

Dad called the hospice nurse again, after putting mom in the hospital bed that had become a fixture in our living room. I drank a can of cider. Mom fluttered in and out of consciousness. 

My yoga teacher had suggested I read to her while she lay in bed, and out of sentiment’s sake I had chosen Winnie the Pooh. I was in such a poor state that I had only done it once before that day, though, so I started the second chapter as we waited for the nurse.

As fate would have it, it was the story where Pooh goes to Rabbit’s house, eats too much honey, and gets caught in the door on his way out. Wouldn’t it be odd, I thought, morbidly, if this was the last story I read to her? This story of a sweet old bear caught halfway out the door.

The hospice nurse arrived, checked mom’s vitals and swabbed the saliva from her mouth, as she could no longer swallow. The nurse walked dad and I into the other room, and told us she probably had a week to live. It was like a grenade went off in the room. I needed to steady myself, so I went upstairs, got on the computer, and read comics reviews.

Shortly thereafter, mom’s morphine pump ran out of batteries. Dad went upstairs to get the replacements. When he was halfway down the stairs, the nurse shouted “Steve, she’s going!” He vaulted the rest of the steps, and I followed shortly thereafter.

When we arrived, mom sputtered out her last few breaths. Dad said, “I love you Mel. I’ll never forget you, as long as I live.” All I could say, was sorry, over and and over again.

Dad stayed with her body, and I went to pick up my sister from college. It was a I miracle I didn’t get into and accident. I bawled and wailed the whole way there, a and then I was done. 

The day of the funeral was sunny and crisp, autumn at its most sublime. The service was held a the church mom had grown up in, a small Lutheran chapel with stained glass windows.

I wrote my mother’s eulogy. I had planned to for years. It was the best speech I ever gave - my diction was clear, my gaze met the crowd. Afterwards, they would tell me they saw her standing behind me.

I didn’t stutter until the very end, when I said the words she wanted to be remembered for:

“Life is short; be kind, and be memorable.”

And then I sat in the pew, and shed one last tear.

I wish I could tell you I fixed after that, but I wasn’t. I spent another four months at that hellish bank job before I quit. When I quit, I took up yoga again, and started cooking. I began to rebuild myself. During that time, my friend’s mother helped me find a teaching job, here in Korea, and that’s how I finally began living again.

Is everything perfect now? Of course not. I still have trouble getting close to people; I’m a twenty six year old virgin. But things are a hell of a lot better, and it’s getting easier all the time.