It feels like Fall today...

It feels like Fall today and it's bringing me down.  I don't remember exactly when my mom was diagnosed with cancer, but I think it was the Fall. The Fall always brings feelings of sadness, yet hope nostalgia?  I'm not sure.

Anyway.  I remember my mom being diagnosed with cancer.  I remember walking through the halls of my middle school feeling special for that reason.  But feeling like I had no reason to feel special.  Don't get me wrong.  I didn't feel special in a good way.  But special like "this isn't supposed to happen to kids my age and it's happening to me."

But I minimized my own pain.  I told myself, "people get diagnosed with cancer everyday."  People's parents get diagnosed with cancer everyday.  It's not like you have cancer.  So on and so on.  I told myself not to feel this strange sort of special.  Or maybe, not to acknowledge that I felt so.  I did myself a disservice.

But I wasn't prepared to deal with such a situation.  I didn't have the tools or the resources to deal.  No one told me it was okay to feel this way.  Or to feel at all.  No one really even told me what cancer meant.  I mean... I knew what cancer meant.  In the way that all 14-year-olds do.  But I didn't know the way that adults know.  Or the way that adults who have lost someone to cancer know.  No one told me.  No one held me in this strange feeling I was having.  In the strange feelings I was having.

I think back and it feels like no one was thinking of me.  Like, people were trying to think of me, but at the same time were letting their fears get in the way of constructively thinking of me.  And maybe I'm resentful.  Maybe that makes me feel like a child (in a bad way).  Like I can't let go.

Here's what I wish:
I wish I would have spent more time with my mom when she was diagnosed with cancer.
I wish I would have held her in my arms, resting my head on her shoulder.
I wish she would have taken me out of school when she was diagnosed with cancer.
I wish she would have taken me on a trip before her cancer got really bad.
I wish she would have let me live with her in the nursing home.  Even though it smelled like pee and old people.
I wish she would have let me visit her more often in the hospital. I wish someone would have made me visit her more often in the hospital.
I wish I would have hugged her more.
I wish I would have spent more time with her.  And less time with my friends. But mostly I wish I would have spent more time with her.

Preface to all following posts.

I'm not making this blog known to anyone via facebook. I may make it known on tumblr, because I feel more free to be myself on that site.  However, I will not make it private, because if someone should happen to stumble upon it and need it, I'd like that person to know they are not alone.  You are not alone.  I'd like to know that I am not alone.  I know now that I am not alone.

I stumbled upon a website called Hellogrief.com, and found the inspiration to create this blog.  It was inspiring and comforting to read others' stories of losing a parent around the same time as me. You see, no matter how much my friends love me, they aren't able to and never will be able to understand.  They can't understand what it was like for me then, and they can't understand what it's like for me now.  Nor do I wish them to understand.  All they can do is be there in the only way they know how.  I'm so completely grateful for everyone who has been there, because I know I haven't made it easy.  For that, I'm sorry.  It's just that, ever since my mom died, I haven't quite known how to be; how to live.  So for the most part I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to stuff the pain down and numb it from my very being.  But you can't really do that.  It comes out in all different, unexpected, inappropriate ways.  Best to just deal with it as it is.  So, here goes...

My mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was 13 years old.  From the research I've since read, that's the time when kids feel invincible.  I'd say so, because even though a part of me thought she might die (I knew it was stage 4 colorectal cancer and I knew what that meant) I was still so very hopeful that she would live.  I didn't actually believe she would die.  I wasn't ready for my mom to die.  I wasn't ready to have to deal with such adult matters.  Surely, if I'm not ready, life won't make me deal with it, right (at least that's what I had been told)?  Wrong.  So very wrong.  Life is unfair.  My grandpa told me this when I was very young (somewhere between 3 and 5 years old).  Along with "you're mom won't be here forever, you know."  Perhaps because it was so traumatizing, or perhaps because some divine, infinite part of me knew, these two bits of "advice" always stuck with me.  And only became all the more ingrained when, unfairly, my mom left the world, and me, when I was only 14 years old.

This blog is dedicated to myself as a space to work through my grief.  I've held it in for far too long, thinking I would be rejected if I shared it.  Please, if you are thinking of posting any negative comment/question, just keep it to yourself and stop reading my blog. I will promptly delete anything I find offensive and I won't respond to offensive comments/questions either (because that's my prerogative). Otherwise, any open-hearted questions or otherwise positive comments are welcome.