Friday, May 19
Scanxiety is real.
We’ve been waiting over a week for the results of Ty’s recent scans for cancer and I find myself preoccupied in worry almost all the time.
May 23, 2023
The news yesterday hit me like a cheap shot sucker punch. One minute, I was on the phone with my friend Tia completely engulfed in the dramas of being a mom to a pre teen boy who got into a fist fight, the next moment, I was drowning in words that my mind could not comprehend. Ty interrupts my phone call asking what my availability is on June 9.
Strange, I thought. What is so important that he needs to be sure I’m available?
Something in me must have recognized the seriousness of it all because I abruptly end my phone call with Tia and go sit next to my husband at the outdoor table. I can tell he’s on the phone with a doctor and he silently mouths “Ridley Tree” to me, and in that instant every single cell in my body is on high alert once again. Ridley Tree means Cancer Center which means this phone call is definitely about Cancer.
When the phone call ends, I ask him what that was about. He sits silent for a moment and I can tell he’s steadying himself for what he’s about to tell me.
He tells me calmly in a voice where I can’t quite tell how serious it is, that the scans they took a couple weeks ago showed some anomalies on his liver.
This is when the words begin to have teeth and I can feel them biting me hard.
Charlotte came into my room and lay down on the bed next to me. She shut the door and I could tell that my girl just needed me. She said something that made all the other thoughts in my mind stop swirling.
“When I came home, I was just needing to see a happy and calm mommy but you weren’t. You were mad and not smiling.”
Oh, my dear sweet love girl.
It was a moment that will guide me likely for the rest of my life. Being selfless in love sometimes means swallowing my own feelings and forcing them to stay silently tucked inside so they don’t spread to my loved ones. My children. My husband.
As I tried and failed to keep my tears from falling, I remember thinking, “What the fuck Erin. Why can’t you be as strong as your own mother was for you.”
My mom always met us with a smile that even shined through her eyes and a warm embrace, no matter what mess was swirling around in her mind. I’m still not sure how she was able to maintain such grace and self control around us children every day, but I do know that when my mom was around, I always felt safe. I never even knew bad thing could possibly happen until much later in life when I got my heartbroken for the first time.
She was so good at not giving us her own emotional wreckage, yet I wonder if that also made it difficult for me to navigate my own emotions as I got older?
“Doing the Best I Can.” That is what my new sweatshirt says that arrived in the mail yesterday. I told Ty that I plan to wear this every waking moment as we sludge our way through May and inch towards the finish line that marks Summer break.
Aren’t we all doing the best we can? Maybe not, but I like to assume that we really are all doing the best we can.
May 31, 2023
Today is the day. The day where I made a commitment to myself, to my own dreams. I literally jumped up and down like my body could not even contain the excitement and exhilaration I felt when Ty and I decided that we would indeed say YES to the book!!!!!
I AM OFFICIALLY A WRITER. I AM GOING TO BE A PUBLISHED WRITER.
Just writing these words makes my stomach do flip flops in the best kind of way that I have been so unfamiliar with lately. Who knew that the very week I learned of a suspicious spot on Ty’s liver would be the catalyst for me to finally take the path that’s been collecting dust all these years.
Life is precious. I am so blessed to even get this opportunity in life to go after my passion, my dreams. And I am only looking forward now, not back!
Well, I may look back to write my book, since all of my knowledge that will be in this book comes from my lived experiences.
I don’t ever want to forget this euphoric feeling I have today. In the midst of what should be a very scary time of waiting for answers about that pesky spot on the liver, I instead find myself inspired and energized by what a gift this life is to us and that I am no longer afraid of anything.
May 31, 2023
The reason why I am choosing not to tell even my closest friends about the potential dread of the news we are awaiting is because I love them so much that I want to protect them. I don’t want them to feel worry, I don’t want them to feel sadness, and I don’t want them to worry about me or worry about Ty.
It’s a burden too heavy to give them right now and since I’ve found a lightness with it through the grace of God, I feel that I don’t need them to worry too.
Fear is not what I need right now.
I need strength, I need faith, I need peace.
June 5, 2023
The day we learned that what we are dealing with is indeed cancer.
I feel like the ground beneath us was shifted so quickly that we are still clamoring for solid ground to stand upon, but there is none.
With cancer, there really is no solid ground to be found, though we will try desperately to create it.
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