I will not break. I can’t. The world is rushing like a whirlpool around me, trying to take my feet. I take a knee, but I’ll not break.
Three months ago… I think…my dad got noticeably sick. Pain. Pain leveled him and he could do nothing but sit, and even that was excruciating. Doctor said the wrong thing. Specialist cut him open to find another.
Cancer. Found out on my birthday. Happy Birthday to me. That was two months ago.
Since then. Dear friend. Brunch friend. Business advisor. Surrogate aunt and the woman who dragged my ass to the doctor last year. Her cancer came back. She’d just been declared in remission. She was not. They transferred her to hospice. The last time I saw her, I only had one eye.
Did I mention I’ve been getting stabbed in the eye every few weeks? First one, week later, the other. My own problems don’t stop for the world.
Never saw my best friend dying. He did. One Sunday in the middle of the month. Brain twin. Writing partner. The other half of my personality. Gone. We had such plans for next year. Doing the con circuit. Releasing our books. Hitting all the writers conferences and making a splash. Damn we could work a room.
The week before, we’d just gone to a comicon. Had a blast. Finally met his sister and his niece. She was dressed as a ghostbuster. He was so goofy proud. The Friday before, I wish I’d gotten him a sandwich. We were working that night, we always worked Fridays. I’d grab him one on break sometimes. That Friday he’d ordered out though. The day before, we chatted as we did nearly every damn day for twelve years. The hours before, he’d finished his D&D session and said they’d lost their healer. Needed that. We talked about a movie I’d just watched. Said he was going to watch one before bed.
I hope it was a good one.
That Sunday, he didn’t wake. Embolism. Gastric hemorrhage. Bleeding inside. Maybe he didn’t feel it.
I was knocked flat. The rising tide trying to drown.
But I would not break, swept along as I was. I almost did at the funeral, but the last speaker pissed me off so much on my friend’s behalf, rage regained my composure. (Comforted later by the fact I was not alone in my rage.)
The Sunday after, my last uncle passed. Smile on his face, I heard. He’d beat lung cancer and pneumonia. Just released from the hospital. And gone. Aneurysm. Stroke. I can’t remember. Something burst. Dad’s the youngest. Seems like a countdown to me.
Doctors appointments. More surgery for dad — installed an easy access port for the poison. We couldn’t go to the funeral. I sent flowers. I couldn’t go see my dear friend in hospice.
She passed the day after my uncle’s service. I don’t think she knew it. Her funeral was Halloween — my favorite holiday — happening right in the middle of Dad’s first cancer treatment. I sent flowers as her husband broke.
They shot Dad up with x-rays and strapped on a pump full of healing poison. Five days a week for six weeks. At the time of this writing, we’re four weeks in.
I cling desperately to the few constants. Dear love. Stout friends. The hands reaching out for me. All to whom I am grateful.
My writing. I still try. I can’t not. It’s proved a beacon in the storm.
I made my first pro sale. A short story about a billionaire who steals his own spaceship to search for aliens on the moon. I’ve finished my current obligations to Felix. Second season complete. Currently writing a Christmas special.
It’s slow going, twelve hundred words over the last week. Excruciatingly slow. Well off my August pace of thirty-five hundred words a day. But still I write.
I write this as we wait, my Dad and I, for his radiation treatment. Two hours late due to another’s suffering. Seems it isn’t just contained to us.
The other day a friend said he admired my strength. How I’ve been so productive despite all of this — and while still working full time. That half of this would lay most award winning writers flat. I don’t know what to think about that. I can’t really think about that. Think like that.
I will not break. I can’t. I’m the only thing keeping him going, and I need him to keep going. There are two I dread the most, his is one. I’ll crumble then.
I’m just putting it off as long as possible.
After? Who knows.
When I published my first book, I lost my Mom the next day. It was small, only took a month to write it. She got to read it before she went, sudden as it was. It took three years after that to finish the second I’d begun while publishing the first. But I didn’t write for at least a year. So…
I make myself write, despite the loss. Despite the pain. Despite everything trying to take me down. Because if I don’t? I won’t.
And so I hope you read. And I hope it helps you through a rough time. When you feel alone and about to break.
If no one else tells you: You will not break.
–j.e. pittman