(no subject)

Did you say "no, this can't happen to me,"
And did you rush to the phone to call
Was there a voice unkind in the back of your mind
Saying maybe you didn't know him at all
You didn't know him at all, oh, you didn't know

I am the ghost that comes and goes

Blank. My mind is a blank and empty slate.

I had thought that when I sat down to write out how I was feeling, that the words would spill out from my fingers like carbonated bubbles escaping the edges of my drinking glass.

But, they're not there. And I'm not quite sure where exactly they've gone to.

Chemotherapy is such a scary, ugly word. And I have so many different thoughts and fears. I just can't give any of them a name, I think.

I'm so scared. Things are difficult to deal with right now, what's going to happen in a month when she's sick and puking with hair falling out and sores in her mouth? Already the three of us in this household skulk around each other, like entrants in Shirley Jackson's Lottery.

This evening, she and my brother got into some kind of fight. I was in my room, getting dressed, but I could hear their raised voices. And she was crying. Again, with the crying. She was saying that she couldn't deal with it anymore, with the attitude. And he kept telling her he wasn't giving her any attitude. But, I couldn't hear anything after that.

I came out a couple of minutes later and went about my business, but asked her what was wrong. And she, of course being my mother and exactly like me, wouldn't tell me what was the matter. I had to force it from her. That she was depressed. And no, there wasn't anything I could do. I asked her a billion times.

Is there anything I can get for you?
Do you want something to drink?
Do you want me to stay home tonight, because I will if you like.
How about a book?
Is there anything you want me to bring home?

What.
Can.
I.
Do?

And in the end, there wasn't a damn thing I could do for her. Just like always. First verse, same as the first.

I've been researching the chemo drugs they want to inject into her veins. They've such repulsive names, it pains me to look at them. Side effects are numerous and just as ugly, but of course everything is worded so very carefully.

Patient MAY experience...
There is a POSSIBILITY of...
SOME patients have found...
IF you experience this...

I sit here, with my pajama pants and crown of braids, Jack Daniels burning my lips and throat. I sit, listening over and over to Robert Johnson sing about the devil and the crossroads and the hellhounds on his trail. Fair deals gone wrong and cold hearted women. I bury myself in meaningless words and endless scientific explanations. A clicking keyboard and a smoldering cigarette.

The cancer support newsgroup that I subscribed to, I think I'm going to delete that from my server. It's really doing nothing but depressing me even worse. I read a post this evening about some woman's father who just died and the amount of morphine they had him on at the end.

He was 55.

Fifty fucking five. My mother is almost three years older than that.