Terminal Illness in Loved Ones

How do you deal with a sick loved one? How do you deal with feeling helpless? How do you deal with the surge of emotions that range from mad they're sick to thankful they're still breathing? Even if it's barely half a breath.

Life took the strongest people I know and made them the sickest. They went from being the most reliable people to the most reliant. A rock turned into shattered glass in need of careful assembling.

You look at life differently the moment you see the people you once looked up to crumble and break. You start to question everything. Why did they have to be the ones? People needed them the most. The two most powerful and most salient women in my family were sick. They are sick. And there is no going back. Things will never be the same. They will never be the same. The balance is askew. How does one sleep as a teenager one night and wake up an adult the next day?

So what do you do? Do you step up instead of them? Do you start taking their responsibilities and caring for everyone else? Do you set your mental health aside and act okay?

Once we receive the bad news, we begin to worry about ourselves, thinking "oh no! what am I gonna do without you" or "how can I live without you" and "I need you by my side". You may not say these things directly to their faces, but you at least need to admit that you think about it. Yet, do we even consider how the actual person feels? The person going through everything themselves? The person who is actually in all sorts of pain? Or do we just think about how their sickness is an inconvenience to us? And how it does not fit into our lives. Not to mention our schedules.

Personally, I find myself being mad at them for being sick. Like they have any control over it. Because how can I suddenly be the one left with the adult role? And how can someone strong like them become so fragile? Unrecognizable. But what good does that thinking do?

So how do we stop being selfish in every aspect of our lives?

We turn back to them and stop being self-centered. We support them, we are there for them.

But who is there for us? Isn't it cruel? The cycle of always needing someone to lean on? Well, who does the last person lean on? Who's at the end of that line?

Still, do not fret if you have no one to lean on. Because you are still here, pushing through. Maybe this is the time you discover how you can take care of yourself and that you can depend on the person you are.

If you've ever lost a loved one, you haven't. Their energies don't disappear, they're reinvented. Beautiful sunsets, bright stars, a rainy day... They will always be there to remind you they're with you. And so am I. I will always be here, a message away.

This topic is not light for me. I was not planning on writing - let alone uploading - this. Seeing someone you love suffer is like slowly taking small pieces of your heart until there's nothing left but a void that still feels pain. Have you felt that pain before? How do you deal?

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