For those of you who don't know, my mother is a survivor of breast cancer. She came into my room when I was 17 and gave me the news. I couldn't process it right away. I remember, it was a few weeks later, before she had even gone into treatment, that it hit me. I was sitting in the hallway of my highschool, helping my best friend choreograph a dance routine, that I finally just lost it and sobbed my eyes out. Two weeks later, I was on a plane to Germany. I didn't realize it at the time, but my mom shipped me off (against the advice of every single one of her 'also a mother' peers) to Europe for 8 weeks while she underwent the radiation treatment. By the time I came home, she was cured. The cancer had been removed and was gone forever.
I still tear up thinking about it. See, it's been just me and my mom against the world since I was 10. That was when my brother moved out to live with his soon to be wife. Ever since, it's been me and her against the world. I knew, even from that age, that no matter what happened, my mom and I would make it through. We had each other, and that was all we needed.
A year later, my father was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer. Complications from the radiation and chemotherapy took him from me when I was 22, 3 months before my graduation from college. I passed my last trimester on what I like to call 'pity credits'. My professors had known me for almost 4 years at that point, and though I only came to 1 in every 3 classes, I still passed each with a B. They knew me, and knew what I was capable of, and most of them knew, on some level, the crippling grief I was trying to deal with.
The point of all of this, is not to make you pity me. Many, in fact most, in this world have it much harder than I. I am phenomenally blessed in comparison. But in comparison does not make my grief, nor your pain, any less real. It does not take away from my heart being ripped from my chest as my father was taken from me, or as I fear my mother will be in time. It does not diminish the pain of losing my best friend in the process, or of wrongly interpreted prophesy. I broke. I shattered into a million pieces. But I am who I am today because of it.
The Gentleman once told me, "You are the smallest person I have ever looked up to." And that means more than I could ever express here in the blog. And the foundation that has been built on that pain is what makes me able to do what I have in the past few weeks. If it wasn't for the OSM,who, even tonight, took my hand and promised me that we would always be us, no matter the relationship we were in, or my mother, who has endlessly supported me in the past few years, or the memory of my father, or the despair that gripped me, or the grief that ripped me in two, I wouldn't be where I am. I wouldn't be who I am. This pain, and these friends, and my family, have formed such a solid foundation that I can reach, that I can stretch myself beyond where I am comfortable. For if I fall, my foundation is a solid, and comfortable place to land.
So for all of you that have been there for me, for all of you that make up the intricate lattice that is my foundation, for all of you that have held me through the questioning and tears: I say thank you. There are no words. There is only a gratitude born from my heart of hearts. You have built me up to this. You have given me wings. Thank you for giving me the ability to take flight.
No comments:
Post a Comment