It’s been too long.
A number of emotion-sparking events have happened, and I did not process them. I reverted to repressing them. Old habits die hard; I guess.
But now things have reached a boiling point. If I don’t bleed it out onto the page, I will self-destruct.
I don’t think I will like what comes out. I feel shame and guilt for feeling the way I do about this last week’s sequence of events.
My mom has a condition called Walstrom’s. It’s a cancer of the blood. It moved from “smoldering” into a more aggressive state that now needs to be treated with chemotherapy.
I guess I had more shock than I expected. I don’t know why, but when she told me she needed to start chemo. I became numb. I distanced myself from my wife and son, retreated into solitude and self-soothed with bourbon and video games.
Angry – Distant – Numb
I was not a good father or husband that evening.
But time passed, and I reverted back to rationalizing myself out of emotions.
Mom is 78. The average life expectancy is 79 for women in the U.S. Death comes for us all. And when I was at my lowest state in life, death felt like it would be a sweet release.
But as time moved on that night, I felt:
Sad – Guilty – Ashamed
I love my mom. I didn’t always like her growing up. She always seemed so hard to please. I know it came from a place where she was trying to make me the best version of myself now. But into my adult life, I had to put a guard up around her. She was always so negative, focusing on all the pessimistic, toxic things. Voicing them always. Judging.
Being exposed to her too much would put me in a similar, negative state.
But now that she is entering this phase of her life, I feel ashamed. I feel like a bad son. I feel guilt. I feel shame.
There is something now, seeing her and dad, knowing that the care-taker rolls must eventually flip. Knowing that death is the next step in the adventure for them. Knowing they are mortal. I guess I wasn’t ready for that.
And I started to feel grief. Intermixed with the shame and guilt, I begin to grieve. For an event not happened yet, but an inevitable one to come.
Sad – Despair – Grief
Mom got her first dose of chemo, and things seemed to be fine. But later, the following week, I get a text from Dad. Mom is in the hospital. Heart palpitations. Irregular heartbeat. They can’t seem to get her heartrate down. She is staying the night; no treatment is working. They do believe it is a reaction to the chemo.
Later that day, my son came home from school all scratched up. A new kid who transferred to his school, unprovoked, put my son in a headlock, punched him repeatedly, and tried to throw him down a steep hill.
I bury and repress. I need to compartmentalize. I need to control something because I feel overwhelmed.
Bad – Stressed – Overwhelmed
My thoughts move from my mom to my son. His story has not changed as we have asked for more details. Even as of today, his story has not altered.
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember.” – Mark Twain
My son wasn’t lying. He got bullied. He got attacked for no legitimate reason other than being near this kid when he has the impulse to physically hurt someone for pleasure.
Anger – Aggressive – Provoked/Hostile
I want to go throat punch this little son of a bitch. Thrown him down a hill. Put him in a headlock and punch the shit out of him. Like he did to my son. Ugly I know – but it was my honest, initial, emotional reaction.
To show this kid what being bullied feels like.
How dangerous it would be to allow emotion to control one’s actions.
More texts come in about my mom’s condition.
My cousin, who I am closer with than my own brother, calls me in a panic over my mom, his aunt, and I feel the guilt again.
I’m compartmentalizing, while he is worried and panicked, should I not be feeling the way he is feeling? More guilt. More shame. My cousin is a better son to my mother than I am, I think to myself.
They are keeping mom overnight. Dad is with her. I feel I should go down there and I start to worry.
Fearful – Anxious – Worried
Is this it? Is this the end? Mom can be a hypochondriac, but the heart is not stabilizing. Is this the end?
Dad talks me down. Says she is in good hands he tells me.
I stay with my family.
A teacher friend of ours reaches out to us – her son told her the story about my son getting in a fight.
Apparently, the fight was big enough to make it throughout the whole school. She recommends to us that we tell the staff, get my son’s side of the story in first, but either way, the school has a zero-tolerance policy on fighting – both kids would be suspended.
Anger – Mad – Furious
Anger – Aggressive – Hostile
I’m ready to go meet with the school directly. And yell, scream, about what bullshit that is. It is a basic human right to defend yourself. What should my son have done? Allow himself to be hurt? You blame/punish both the perpetrator and victim the same?!?!
Righteous Indignation. Or, at least in my mind it is.
I am seething. I’m ready to punch this asshole kid and scream at the school faculty for its injustice. I feel, I believe, I am on the right moral side of the argument. I want to confront the faculty and yell and scream and call attention to the absolute cowardly injustice of their ‘policy.’
Hold the perpetrator accountable. My son’s story has not changed. To me, to my wife, together and individually.
Mom’s still not stable, everything is out-of-control, everything is wrong. I take more sips of the bourbon. It calms me.
My wife checks in.
I tell her I am not checking out of things. However, right now, I need to defer to her to handle my son and defer to dad to handle mom. Dad says mom will be fine; I’m choosing to trust dad.
My wife is much better at handling morally sensitive, political bullshit. I am an idealist. In a morally-backward world. I get pissed quickly at shit behavior.
I tell her I will support her in however she wants to approach the bullying situation. My son doesn’t want to snitch. Because when he has done that before, all it has done for him is make matters worse. Bullying comes back ten-fold. It just does. We teach kids to raise issues to teachers; but it never works out well in the end for the kid who tells. Not for me, not for my son. What ends up working is standing up to a bully, sticking up for yourself, and handling the situation on your own.
Even if that means defending yourself through physicality.
I agree with my son. I tell him I agree with him. I also tell him no matter the fallout, I am in full support of him defending himself and standing up to bullies. It is his God-given right to defend himself from harm.
But I navigate to my wife here, there is too much anger within me to manage the politics.
This is just wrong.
The human masses’ thought processes are so backward and screwed up. Mainly because no one wants to confront the true root cause of any problem. Just paint with a broad brush. It’s easier. It’s non-confrontational.
Because people are cowards.
I need to be done tonight. I fear all this is far from over in causing heavy, emotional swings within me.