ago you were the happiest you've ever been in your life. Everything made sense. There was a sense of belonging and comfort that can only come from the person that you love-your person. There's always things to talk about, games to play, fun to be had, love to be made, etc. Every day was a new adventure and you wake up excited to see what the new day brings. Until it brings your world and everything as you knew it to a crashing halt.
Suddenly, you start waking up every day lost and confused. Your person is nowhere to be found and you're terrified. The silence is deafening. The biggest part of your heart and now your life is gone from you in the blink of an eye. They don't care about the emotional, mental, psychological, trauma and pain they've caused. The pain is all encompassing and it hurts physically and mentally. It becomes hard to function. You can't eat for fear of vomiting so you basically start living off water alone. Before you realize it, you've lost 20 pounds in the span of only three weeks. 20 pounds that you couldn't afford to lose in the first place. When you look in the mirror you see this shell of a person whose bones are starting to show from not eating. There's no life left in your eyes. There are bags so deep under your eyes from not sleeping. The pain and trauma cycle has now left you physically sick.
Your doctors change your medications trying to get you to "snap out of it" only you can't. up your antidepressants, SSRI, and anxiety medication and now you have to take medication to sleep. If you forget it, you won't sleep that night. You can't stop crying. The headache never goes away. You turn into a hermit and stop responding to friends and family calling or messaging you. Days turn into weeks and weeks into months of hiding out from the outside world in your house with only the cats for company. The walls are closing in but it's all you know at this point. You're on autopilot.
You get up, take the child to school, go to work, and back home at end of shift. You don't even know how you get where you're going because you're so zoned out of it. There are several missed calls and unanswered texts because you just don't have the energy to answer them. Unsurprisingly you cause a fender bender because of being zoned out. Thank heavens no one was hurt and vehicles weren't damaged. Just one more thing to add to the list of things you've done that are bad-things that you know about at least. For some, you don't even know what you did-only that the one who was your world, your everything is gone.
You feel like you want to escape the world. You even tried to commit suicide when everything had just happened. Someone found you before it was too late and now you're in therapy as well as taking medications.
Big anniversaries and days come and go. Your 40th birthday comes and goes. You now have to start having extra medical tests done yearly. The doctor orders your first mammogram and you go to the hospital for it to be done. Little knowing that this day is the day your life turns even more upside down.
The radiologist finds two tumors in right breast and wants better images of them. You end up going through an ultrasound and two more rounds of mammography on that breast until you can't take it anymore. You blacked out-if you weren't holding onto the machine where the technician placed your hands, you'd have hit the floor. Thankfully you're in a hospital and they get you into a chair with a cold compress on your head and make you drink a soda and let you leave only once they know you have someone that can drive you home. If not, you have to stay until someone picks you up. You're disoriented, sore, scared, hurting on one side, and even more lost than normal wondering where your person is. The one who promised forever. The one who said there was no going back. Your everything. The person you loved the most deeply in this world-and still love deeply to this day. All for naught I guess.
Unsurprisingly your doctor calls and tells you that your mammogram came back abnormal and they want you to see a surgeon. The surgeon gets to decide if the tumors can be biopsied, have to come out, can stay in, etc. The appointment with the surgeon is two days after that mammogram. You meet with him and he gives you the choice so you have them removed-a choice that just may have saved your life. The life you tried to end. The life you still wander aimlessly through as a zombie in a maze of darkness and fog. You've been scared and confused and lost all this time and with each passing day you're more and more terrified of what is coming. And still, the one you love and so desperately need and want is nowhere to be found. Probably for the best since you're starting to feel like a burden to those around you.
The day of surgery comes and goes. It's an outpatient procedure so you're able to go home after. Four days later, you find out that one of the tumors is cancer. Carcinoma. Suddenly you're in various doctors' offices so fast your head is spinning. Still that one person you want and need so badly isn't here.
You have to undergo six weeks of intense radiation treatments, start using prescription burn cream on that area, take new medications in addition to the plethora of medication you already are on. You have to check in with different doctors every couple months which puts you in a doctor's office at least once or twice a month with blood and urine labs each visit. Each time this happens you get another copay, another copay for labs, more medication, more unsettling news. At this point you're going where they tell you, doing what you're told, all with no questions, no arguments, just terror of what lies ahead along with a mountain of various medical bills piling up waiting to be paid.
This is your life now. You've lost the only one who meant anything to you other than your child. Your body has betrayed you. You paid off your debt because you had to buy a new car only to have medical debt start accumulating. Still you are zoned out. Going about your business. You purposely don't go places where a lot of people are. You sacrifice people you thought were friends and a game you loved so that your love still has the only outlet he had. He still has his hobby. Your game is stalled indefinitely now but you're not mad about it if he's happy. We want to do things for ones we love. We sacrifice for those we love. It doesn't make anything less easy but at least you know you're acting out of love for another person-even if they don't know it or care that you're doing it.
You start trying to make your peace with being alone through this cancer journey and in life in general. You try to stay amicable with your child's father. You pretend you're ok just so your child won't worry. Truth is your child lost his mother in december. She's emotionally dead and physically numb just going through the motions day to day. She wonders why she had to live only to find out she's got to fight her own body to stay alive. A fight she's doing on her own. As she's done everything on her own for seven months. As she'll continue to do. Her father raised her to be independent so she takes care of her house, her child, her bills, pays for landscaping, buys and cooks food daily, etc. etc. etc. This is her life now. This will be her existence for the rest of her life. She learns to mourn the abandonment or ghosting whatever you prefer, as a death. One that she wishes so desperately she could resurrect so that she's with her love-the one she's meant to be with. The soulmate that brought her out of her shell and taught her to love again. The one who is the other half of her heart. Her soul has been ripped from her leaving her almost a walking zombie. This is her life. This is my life. This is me. This is what the rest of my life is going to be.