Yesterday I learned that my dad has cancer and I don’t know how to feel about it. I’ve become so good at being very neutral in life, because you think what’s the point. What’s the point of it all–of getting all worked up about things you have no control over… Instead I’ve learned to focus only on the things I have control over.
You have no control over someone’s illness, natural disasters.
You can’t control death.
You can’t control how someone feels or what someone does.
We spend so much time suffering.
We suffer by ourselves and for ourselves.
We suffer for others and we suffer for the world.
Much of my time growing up was spent suffering over things I had no control over. The pain I felt from those around me, from the world and from my own pain.
Today I still feel the pain of it all but the difference is I no longer suffer over it. As a famous saying goes, “pain is inevitable suffering is optional” and that is a lesson I learned through my own experiences.
I haven’t thought about this for a long time… Yet this place right here is one I know too well, I’ve been here before.
I was 16 when my mother was first diagnosed with colon cancer and then again when I was 17 she had a malpractice done on her that kept her in a hospital for a year of her and of my life. Not knowing if she would make it or not.
It was one of the hardest yet most profound moments of my young adulthood. Her illness forced me to reach deeper and to seek refuge inside myself. Deciding if I would allow myself to be swallowed into darkness or to look for the light in all of it.
During those moments I suffered in silence, never allowing my true feelings to surface expect form time to time on pen and paper.
And here today, once more, I find myself back in an old familiar space.
Learning that my dad has cancer and that he has been bleeding profusely. It’s a shocking discovering for me. I didn’t expect this and with this news, old feelings and memories have surfaced. I had to allow myself to go into these feeling last night; I didn’t want to push them aside.
That is what I did when my mother was sick. I use to bury my feelings because I didn’t want to feel, I didn’t want others to feel bad for me, I didn’t want feel sorry for myself and I didn’t want to burden others with my problems because after all everyone has them.
I didn’t want to be weak and back then I use to think that if I allowed myself to feel the pain, to feel bad for myself- that, that was weakness. In many ways it was denial that I was working with, unwilling to come face to face with my own shadow.
But it always catches up with you in one way or another. We can’t hide from our shadows for long.
The shadow lives in our unconscious and although we can’t gaze at it directly because it’s hidden. It seeps through our consciousness momentarily from time to time revealing the thoughts & feelings we work so hard to mask. Though, when the shadow revels itself it’s hardly ever in healthy ways. Our shadow manifests and acts out in many indirect forms. It’s concealed in our bitterness, in our anger, in our bad moods, in our prejudices. Its hidden in our addictive behaviors and on an on….
I’m good at clearing out my emotions on a mental & spiritual level but I realize that I haven’t learned to clear them out of my body.
Like shock absorbers, our bodies absorb our emotional experiences.
My body has been speaking to me and I wasn’t aware of it.
I went back in time last night for a bit. I allowed myself to feel the pain of what I went through with mom year’s back and then I allowed myself to think about my father. What he must be feeling and going through emotionally, mentally and physically…
I feel sad, even though I haven’t sat with this long enough to really process all of it.
Though my body has already been processing all the emotions that I’m probably not even aware of, yet, on a conscious level.
I’ve been having headaches again frequently for the past week or so. A week ago the pain on my neck and shoulders flared up. A year ago, while with a friend whose an acupuncturist. He was massaging my neck and shoulders, when he asked me when did this pain start? I remember it started around the age of 16-17. He then asked what happen to me around that time?
In that moment, I recognized that the pain I’ve been dealing with for years now on my shoulders and neck; is emotional residues from when my mother was sick. I haven’t been able to clear it out from my body.
It also makes sense now why I’ve had some much acid in my stomach recently, as stomach and headaches problems are usually related to anxiety, depression and/or unidentified emotions (emotions that we have been unable to bring into the conscious mind, therefore it manifests into headache and stomach problems…)
We don’t realize or we forget that our body is constantly speaking to us, letting us know that we are not okay even when we think we are.
So I write, in hopes to release some of my thoughts and emotions out from my emotional body and into the physical material world…
It’s heartbreaking, all of it.
The moments I have spent with my dad, they always feel awkward for me. In fact, I don’t like to spend time alone with him and it’s sad. But it’s the truth of how I feel.
When I come to think of it, I’ve always had someone accompany me when I’ve visited my dad. It eases my uncomfortable feelings.
I haven’t explored much into this; in trying to understand the why I feel awkward being alone with him.
Sometimes I don’t know what to say to him. The few times I’ve seen him he gets really emotional and very deep with me in conversation. I know he carries a huge amount of regret and guilt for not being in my life but when he gets like that it makes me uncomfortable.
How ironic is that?
This coming from a person who is lives for depth and isn’t afraid to explore her emotions.
In my mind when I am not with him, I imagine how I would want to feel around him. But in reality, those feelings never match up to how I end up feeling in the here and now of when I have him in front of me.
Even hugging my dad feels uncomfortable to me. But why, when I can so easily connect with strangers and feel at ease.
I love him and I don’t hold resentment towards him, in fact I forgave him very early on. As I am not one that holds on to things because in the end what you hold becomes you.
I don’t crucify people for the mistakes they make.
I believe in forgiveness, if a person can recognize the errors of their way who am I to not forgive. For I am in no way perfect myself. We all make mistakes; we all do things we are not proud of at times.
It is part of the human experience. We fall and hopefully we learn, we pick ourselves up and we keep moving forward.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve so spent many years loving him from afar, that, that is what feels the most natural to me.
In truth I don’t really know…
I can’t imagine what he must be going through or feeling. I saw first hand what my mother went through with her illness; all of it and it was awful.
I can’t lie I still worry about her. I’m not as attached to it all as I once was.
Because again what’s the point of losing yourself in something you can’t control. What’s the point of losing yourself in the stories of your life? You can’t move forward if you keep holding on to your story…
Again what we hold on to, becomes part of us.
Still, I do worry that she’s getting too old to be alone anymore. It’s not healthy for her both physically and mentally. Her depression has been getting worse. I can see it when I speak to her on FaceTime, I can feel it more than ever before.
She’s been trying really hard to keep it together but it’s just something she feels she can’t control.
This is the first time in her life that she is alone. Without a man, nor kids around. And the family, well, we are all scattered around.
I admit I’m sad because my older brother and mother still don’t speak. They haven’t spoken in probably eight years or so. I worry that both of them will regret not having healed their issues before it’s too late to turn back the hands of time.
I’m sad that I haven’t built the type of connection I would have hoped for with my dad and it’s not him, it is all me.
It is sad to admit that at times I’m fed up with seeing my mom sick all the time, too many years in this cycle.
I am sad that my father has cancer.
In the end you have no control over these things and that’s the hardest part of it all. You just sit there on the sidelines, you can’t do much. You do the best you can to be there for those you love. To give them a friendly ear and even words of encouragement but you can’t take away their pain, sometimes all you can do is watch them suffer and hope to keep yourself afloat without feeling the guilt of it all….
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