motherless

Almost Over That Hill

I am months away from my 40th birthday, and I have been thinking about turning the big 4 0 for awhile. Gird your loins, I’m about to word vomit up some feelings.

My mom died at the age of 40, and for the longest time, I thought I would be dead by 40 just like her. When I was in the throes of cancer treatment at the beginning of my 30s, I truly believed that  I was going to end up just like her – just minus the husband and 3 young kids.

My inner monologue would not shut the eff up about this. The thought would just bury itself in my brain, and my inner monologue would not let it quiet. I panicked a lot and felt doomed. All my life, I had been told I look like this woman I have barely any memories of, plus not only that. I talk like her and I walk like her.

Throughout my 20s and then 30s, I had basically all the same medical problems she did. Why wouldn’t I think I’d die just like her? When you are already an anxious person, adding cancer to the mix that was like adding gasoline. It took a lot of years and a lot of therapy to get this fatalist belief out of my head. It’s been almost 9.5 years since I was diagnosed with breast cancer, so that definitely helps too.

My mom’s life and death has been my medical road map. She’s been my answer to so many questions – why I got cancer and why I can’t have kids. For 33 years, I have felt like I have been walking with her by my side. With every surgery or treatment, I can say, “That’s not really a surprise. Mom also had that, or Mom dealt with that.”

So hooray, I am not going to die just like her. Now, I get to wrestle with the fact that I am about to live longer than my mother was able to do. My road map, it’s coming to an end, and it’s scary. How am I going to navigate the shit show that is my medical history without my road map?

This is the part about turning 40 that is scaring me and sends panicky waves washing over me. I have honest to God felt like I’ve been 40 for a good year already, probably because most of my coworkers are so much younger than me. Given the pretty large age difference and my illness, I have felt like I have zero in common with them, who all get along great. I just feel like the weird old lady.

Now that I am turning 40, I am grateful I never had any age goals set because I certainly would be disappointed come April, lol. I have never thought, “I am going to be married with 2 kids by the time I’m 40.” I just want to be happy, and boy oh boy, I do feel that way. It took 36 years for me to reach this stage but here I am, and I never want to leave it.

I enjoy my job, which actually feels like a career to me. I love my boyfriend, and I have a great group of friends. I snipped snipped snipped the awful pieces from my life, and I have filled it with calm happiness. I no longer deal with a cheating boyfriend or crazy stalker ex, or “friends” who try to one-up all your medical problems, like we’re in some competition for who has the worst life.

The older I have gotten, the people I have let in my inner circle are quality, not quantity. I am working out at the gym, and I am the strongest I have ever been. I’m heading into my 40s in good shape, both physically and mentally (knock on wood).  Now I have to wrap my head around what it really means and feels like to live a longer life than your own parent.

 Good thing for therapists, huh?

Book Report: “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed

“I didn’t get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I’d wished she’d done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we’d left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could full. I’d have to fill it myself again and again and again.”

— Cheryl Strayed, “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.”

Back in February, my blog post “Don’t Disappear from the Pictures,” which I had cross-posted on The Huffington Post, was well received.  Much to my surprise, it received thousands of likes, and the blog was shared more than 1,800 times.  When my friend, Julia, read it, she messaged me on Facebook, and highly recommended I read the book “Wild.”  She promised I would love it, and I would relate to it 100 percent.  She then assigned it to me as a book report and get back to her in two weeks.

Yeah. . . it took me three months to finish, though that had nothing to do with the book itself.  Sorry Julia!

Cheryl Strayed is an amazing writer.  Hands-down, this is the best memoir I have ever read.  (Right now, I’m reading “Orange is the New Black,” and I’m noticing a difference between showing, not telling – Piper Kerman tells and Cheryl Strayed shows.)  I highly recommend everyone should read this, especially if you’ve experienced a profound loss in your life.  Even though Cheryl’s situation was different than mine – her mother died of cancer when she was in her early 20s, and mine died of cancer when I was only 7 – the emotions and the ache for your mother when you need her the most is the same.  I related to her anguish, sorrow and determination to figure out her life without her mother in it.

When I came across the above passage, I re-read it several times, just letting the words soak in.  “She would always be the empty bowl that no one could fill.  I’d have to fill it myself again and again and again.”   The loss of my mother has defined me – the motherless girl.  She died at an age where I never fought with her.   I didn’t rebel against her or done any other teenage-angst daughter stuff that mothers endure.  Since she died when I was seven years old, she was frozen in time as the Ideal Mother.  She was my fantasized “what if” world.  When I reached adulthood, I began viewing her as a real person, someone who was far from perfect but loved her family very much.

When I reached adulthood, the loss of my mother defined me again – I had to get annual screenings for the same disease that killed her.   I didn’t have her guidance or knowledge as I navigated breast cancer myself.  I never felt as alone or as empty as I did during chemotherapy.   I had to keep filling my bowl, so speak, by befriending others going through this as well.  I didn’t have her, but I wasn’t alone.

“Wild”  inspired me.  Her story made me even more determined to work on my story, and make it count.  To show, not tell.   To pour my heart into my story, just like Cheryl Strayed did.