What am I without you

I used to relish in the evenings, when the light would dim outside, I used to feel both peace and a form of feeling alive. The absence felt comfortable, where the time was mine to be creative and focus in without any distractions. However, recently these hours have become something I have to endure. It has become endless minutes to hours where I can no longer call you. Too agonizing to sleep, too unbearable to be awake and no healthy way to handle it.

I know I sound dramatic, because you are still here, alive, still only a dial away from where your voice reaches mine. But its different now, your different now. It might be temporary, but this challenge we face isn't. We are all bound to change, it probably wont be a shrink and remove situation, more so a like altering reality we will have to grasp onto.

I have spent the better four years working on our relationship. So much so we have become each others person. Sometimes ill admit, we cross the boundaries of what a daughter should know about her mother and what you know about me. However, you would be my first and last call in every day. And now you can't, because you have Cancer, and everything has changed.

You say you feel more alive, like you have woken up from a daze of the last 3o years. I want to feel happy for you, but this realization comes from all the medication and hormones you have been taking that keep you sane. Since starting Chemo, you had to stop everything and start taking poison instead. You are living in a form of mania driven by inconsistent emotions, tribulations and high up and downs. Dad called me and told me, I just need to take nothing personally, that I just need to be the positive on the other side of the call. But how am I supposed to infuse you with positivity when I know I am already losing part of you, a part of us and who we are together.

I know that sounds selfish, because I will admit, that you are the person I call in every situation. Whether or not its about something I can't decide on or a full blown break down. You are the only person who will never turn me away, and now I have to pull away for you. I feel so alone, and it scares me, because this is only the beginning. No one gets me like we get each other, and nobody can even grasp how involved you are in every part of my day. Everything I do, I think of you. I sit at concerts wishing you came instead, I call you so you can experience an ounce of what I am, because I wish you were here. And you are, but at the same time you can't be.

Your fighting for you life and I am fighting for my nights. Because I no longer can have you in the way I need on the other side of the phone. Loneliness always comes in the hours where no one is around, The time where you are suppose to sleep and regenerate, but my nights are filled with the absence of our conversations, the loss of being able to make them and the fall out of what that means for me. While everyone has a team or someone to hug them through the hard nights, I had you. sure I have friends, I thought I've built a community here, But none that even replace our phone calls and not one, I would rather call exposing my existential crisis of losing someone who is still here.

Even the closest ones, tell me things like" it will be okay, she is still here" and although I appreciate that they answer, at some point I have to let them go and be all alone again. Nobody gets it, nobody gets us. People look at us and think oh its so wonderful you have such a close relationship with your daughter. We put a medal on it for how hard we have worked to become a staple in each others life. But nobody really gets it, nobody understands the deafening silence that is not calling you every time I want. Once again to others its probably alligator tears over a selfish person who wants what she is used to. But my skin in on fire, every night I want to peel it off or slice my wrists over the thought that this is my new reality. That I am already losing you while your still here. I've built a life several states away, for you that used to be a fun escape, now it's my purgatory. But I also know, its my safety net, because everyone else in our family is facing this head on, your changes, the eruptions, the drastic changes you make on a whim because you are experiencing everything in such high volume. I know I am lucky to not see you face this head on, because I think it would destroy me. I don't have enough heart glue to get through that.

I know you are the one going through the the hot flashes, the sleepless nights, the side effects, and you also have an army who are showing up for you. But mom, you were my army and without you, I have bystanders who will have to watch me fall from this. No one can handle my emotions, no one has the time to carry me through this and I don't have that person who will consistently hold me through the hard nights, where their comfort is signed up for, and not just there because I'm throwing my pain at the wall hoping someone can fill the spot that is you during this time in our life.

I feel like I am drowning, and I know I have to keep swimming, but every night I find myself gasping for air over the grief of this change. And its only been three days, what will I do if it's a lifetime. I know the answer will be that its on me, but how can this world both grant me a life that is trying to take you away in front of me, without granting me a person to lean on during this. I don't know if I can take it. I don't know how to call and be a bright spot in your day when I am sleeping in puddles of my own dismay. Once again selfish, I know. But I never planned a version of my life without you in it. I don't even know who I am without you. I don't even know how to calmly get through a day without having you be my rock.

I feel so alone, and I know it's not something I can share with you, because you are already fighting the war; and I am just fighting the thought of change.