How am I supposed to handle reality?

It's been one of those days. The ones where I'm melancholy and a single thought about my dad's cancer can make me burst into tears.

He told me today that he's had cancer for two months now. They didn't catch it at first, but now they know for sure. He also said that he hadn't planned on telling us, but now that his hair had started falling out, he went ahead and let my 12 year old sister and I know what was happening.

Right now I'm on the vicious roller-coaster of "Oh it's going to be fine I can get through this" to "Dear God what the hell am I supposed to do?". He's had health problems since I was a small child and I was always able to handle that. Even when he had surgery to put an implant in his heart, I wasn't this emotional. Even during all of his heart problems, I was able to manage. But now that I know he has lung cancer, I'm prone to bursting into tears at any given time (I'm fighting back tears as I write this......well screw that, now I am crying).

I don't know how I'm supposed to handle this. I don't know how I'm supposed to live my day-to-day life without getting depressed and overwhelmed by the reality of this situation. My dad, the man who's already had at least two heart attacks, has congestive heart failure, skin cancer, and a physical disability now has lung cancer. How am I supposed to handle that? I don't know what the outcome of this is going to be, and that really, really scares me.

I'm trying not to let the stress of this affect my writing. When I was younger (14 and 15), I used writing as an escape to keep from getting overwhelmed with depression and SH urges. Now I'm trying to use it to temporarily forget what is happening to my family and I.

I don't know how the next few months are going to play out. I'd like to hope that I somehow figure out how to get a grip on my emotions and continue to function like a normal human being instead of giving in completely and becoming dysfunctional. But I'm the oldest of my siblings and I have certain responsibilities. I don't know how to handle everything that happens in my "normal" life and still accept the painful reality that my dad has lung cancer. I don't know how I'm going to be able to focus on dance when it starts again in August, not knowing if my dad will make it to all of my performances.

What am I supposed to do?

I'm going to accomplish stuff because life is short

Seriously, life is short. We're not guaranteed tomorrow.

I've always known that my dad's condition is fragile. He's been through a lot these past 9 years. But I want him to see me get published. He's always been quite supportive of my writing and has this idea of me getting published. And I want that to happen. I want him to see me get published, whether it be a short story or novel. I REALLY want him to see me get a novel published, but I know that getting a novel published is a long ways away from now.

After discovering he's got another cancer, I was stunned and feeling hopeless at first. But here I am...what, an hour later? Here I am feeling a new sense of motivation to hurry up and finish a story. I slacked a lot during May, but now I need to get back into writing a lot so I can go out there and get something published. I'm not saying that I need to pound out ten thousand words in a day then ship that story off. There is editing and revising (and maybe rewriting), but before any of that happens, I have to kick my butt into gear and finish something.

So I have deadline for myself: Whether it be a short story, poem, novella, or novel, I want to have something ready by the end of August. Ready as in finished, beta-read, and edited (or revised/rewritten). I want to have sent something out by September, because even if I don't get published this year, at least I can tell my parents that I've tried.

I'm not going to be such a slacker anymore.

Cancer

*** This is a rambly post because I'm still very emotional right now. I'm sorry if it comes off as whiny, but I'm not in the mood for politeness and coherency. ***

Since April, my dad's been "sick". It's not unusual for him to get sick considering how weak his immune system is, but this time he didn't get better. He only got worse throughout the month and through May.

Tonight (well, this morning since it's 3 AM) my mom told my 12 year old sister and I that my dad has lung cancer and is currently going through chemo.

It didn't "shock" me at first. He's already suffered through two heart attacks, has congestive heart failure, and skin cancer. But as she got to talking about it, it finally started to settle in. My dad has another cancer, and this time it's more "severe" (he's had the skin cancer since I was little but it's never been too big of a deal for us).

Darn if it isn't already enough with what he's currently suffering from. As if these last two months haven't already been physically and mentally stressful enough on me.

I don't know what to do right now. I knew something was wrong more so than usual, but I didn't think he had cancer. I mean, what do you do when you're told your parent has another cancer? How does one even process that?

Part of me has a feeling that this knowledge of his cancer is only going to stress me out more. I don't want to slip back into a depressive funk. Been there, done that, it isn't fun. I don't want to be depressed to the point where I cannot function and write. I don't want to be depressed to the point where I'm snapping at everyone and withdrawn.

But how am I supposed to process this and keep my normal routine?

Blocked With My Writing and Why

I've always heard that if you're blocked with any writing project that you should write out why you're blocked, and eventually (hopefully) a way past the block will show itself.

Let's hope this works.

For the past 5 months, I've been working on Draft 2 of my horror novel, Prisoners of The Mind. A lot of what I've written has been "trashed" (filed away in a file, probably never to be used again). I struggled with how I wanted the plot to go, etc etc. Only for the past 2 months have I felt like I've really figured out where I wanted to go with this story.

Unfortunately around the beginning of April, my dad fell ill. He does have congestive heart failure and asthma, so it's not unusual for him to lie around for a few days and be a bit unwell. This time things ended up differently. He wasn't getting better. He'd spend a lot of the night coughing and gagging. There was also some pain in his chest and lung areas, causing him to think that he may have a blood clot.

All of April he was like this, in constant pain and having never ending coughing fits. Eventually he went to the doctor and was told he had a blockage in his throat (a surgery on his neck a couple of years ago ended up scorching his throat and the growth is layers of skin attempting to heal it). Then he told us that he'd gotten pneumonia too.

Now under normal circumstances, he 'd enter the hospital for a week then come out fine. This time he refused to go, saying he wanted to stay home with his family. But as far as I know, he has received little or no antibiotics. And he's not getting better.

This has placed stress on all of us. I've been babysitting my siblings for a few years while my mom works. Now that Dad is so ill, it's become mostly me in charge. I like to call myself the "surrogate mommy". And honestly, I don't mind doing what I can to make my parents' lives easier. I just find out emotionally taxing at times. My sisters are 4 and 12, then my brother is 9. Obviously there is a bit of rebellion every now and then from the three of them, but my brother is the worse. I'm not saying that to be mean. He is just very argumentative and tests my patience.

Throughout all my emotional struggles with doing what I am doing and experiencing all this stress with my dad's illness, I try to keep writing. It's therapeutic for me. When I can't write because I'm experiencing a block, it's insanely stressful, and unfortunately I sometimes let this show via my emotional state (irrationally angry, etc). Or I just feel lost and spend lots of time whining on Twitter about it.

With writing this, I can already feel a weight being lifted off of me. I hope that with confessing all that I have, I can hopefully get back to writing more tonight or tomorrow.

A ranty, stream-of-consciousness post about bullying, body Image, detoxing, and the crappy people who screwed with a certain friend's self-perception

(No names will be used, because I respect the privacy of the others. Although a select few may know the names of the people referred to in this post, I still want to give my best friend as much privacy as possible.)

I met my best friend when I was 11/12 years old. Funny girl. Love her smile and everything about her. Plus we're both nerds so we clicked, as you might say.

I started attending her church;s youth group not soon after I met her. Lovely group, for the most part. Until the time came that a particular girl wanted to be friends with me.

Now nothing was wrong with the idea of that at first, but this girl had bullied my best friend and had been for a while. Still, for some darn freaking stupid reason, I became friends with the bully. (I'm not sure if I understood/knew the entire backstory of the bullying situation, but still, can someone go back and slap 12 year old me?)

Things were okay, at first. Then things started to get a bit heated. The bully became overly controlling and did her utmost to break the friendship my bff and I had. It didn't work, and the bully started to bully me.

I'm not sure how long she bullied me. I know it was at least for a few months. I could handle it at first, sort of, then one day I just broke down because I was sick of all the nasty text messages I'd been sent.

But everyone that knew about the situation was on my side, except for the bully's mother (who was a...shall we say....very defensive woman). And eventually, the situation became resolved and the bully was no longer in my life.

My best friend was affected more deeply than this situation than perhaps I ever was. Yes my 12 year old self was traumatized by the whole ordeal, but I know that my best friend endured the bully's harassment/etc for much longer than I did. I think that's what may have partially made her the way she is today.

Fast forward 3 years to the future. My best friend is no longer attending the youth group, mostly because her family decided to go to a different church, but because the youth group over the past 2 years have formed into cliques. Which means that 99 percent of them practically ignored my best friend and I, the nerds. Sure I'm a dancer and some of the dancers were attending, but they seemed content in their own group.

Ok, maybe that wouldn't be so bad if that was the only thing that was happening. But when the church had movie night and we were all down in the dining hall, my best friend and I have always been sitting alone on those nights we go. I mean, a girl did try to sit with us once before someone else had her leave for God only knows why. :P But their ostracizing us hurt, really really bad. And it affected my best friend to the point where she is worried about people not liking her, and she claims that she has a hard time making friends.

Yes we're homeschooled. Yes we're the slightest bit different being nerds and all. But that doesn't freaking mean that we should be ignored by others. If anything, church/youth group is a place where people should be coming together and having fellowship everyone. There was diversity in the youth group and it needs to be accepted.

(On a side note, we're not the only people that have been ostracized by the youth group. At least 3 others have felt the same.)

Anyways, I learned last night that my bff has a crappy view of her body image, appearance, and overall self-worth. And I got really, really emotional. She doesn't talk about this stuff to most people (I'm one the few she will actually talk to on occasion about personal stuff), and I'm shocked to learn that she, of all people, had such views about her body. She says that she "doesn't fit society's image of beautiful" and that she's always been "bigger and taller than other girls".

I'm not lying when I say that I truly do think she's pretty. Yeah she's like 5'8 and I can totally understand where she's coming from with feeling slightly uncomfortable with her height (I'm 5'6 and when I was 13 I was as tall as most 16 year olds I knew). But her body? Really? She's not even fat. She's only got the slightest bit more weight to her than I do. The slightest bit.

I'm not sure if I just misunderstood her a bit last night, because she very well could have been referring to her height at the same time. But for heaven's sake if she is talking about her weight (she's always been so encouraging and body-positive to other people), she's not fat. I've known her for 3 years and not once have I thought of her as fat. And the other people she's around? I don't think she's really ever weighed more than they.

Ugh, I've just found this incredibly frustrating and saddening. She's one of the people in my life that I look up to, and I can't believe she's felt this way. I don't know what to do to help her without coming off as pushy and overdoing it. I sent her a FB message before I went to bed last night, and she messaged me back and said that it was really encouraging, etc etc. But I truly hate that she feels this way about herself. She doesn't really expose herself to all that much secular media when it comes to stuff about weight and beauty.

And now she's of the opinion that she eats too much and is detoxing. (Cutting out carbs and sugars for a while.) She's been doing well so far, and while she seems to have more energy for it (either that or the fangirling over LOTR, Loki, the new Doctor Who episode, etc have just given her a lot of excitement), I'm worried for her. She told me what she had yesterday for breakfast and lunch. She's not skimping on food, but she says she hasn't decided for how long she'll be on this detoxing thing (although she'll "most likely still be on it when Thanksgiving rolls around"). I just don't want this to escalate into something dangerous.

Anyways, I needed to get that out. Posting it on my Twitter feed just wasn't relieving the stress I needed it to.

Thanks to those who read, and if you're a Christian, please pray for my friend. I love her to pieces and I want her to be happy.

I was stupidly tired last night. I fell asleep around 9:30/10:00, then woke up around 10:30 and couldn't fall back asleep until after 1:45. asdfghjkl Then I woke up this morning dizzy and sick to my stomach until I ate something. Weird stuff.

Anyways, I didn't get any writing done yesterday. There was just too much to do (and I got 6 or 6 & a half hours sleep) and yeah, stupidly tired. I'm not sure how much I'll get done today, because of THINGS. But the effort's worth it.

Now I'm off....to wipe my bloody nose, because it's been bloody for a week at least and I just UGH

That's it, I'm going to craft an argument (not a mean one :P) to convince my parents to let me back on Tumblr. I crave the Tumblr community, it's my safe haven. And I made so many excellent friends on there.

A short post of rambling (you have been warned)

So....I had an interesting start to my week. Not an ideal one, but mistakes happen. There was mis-communication between my mom and I, so Monday was an emotionally taxing day. But we got things cleared up that night. Unfortunately I had gotten a flare-up, aura and a borderline migraine. :P

Today I just want to relax, get done what I need to get done, and enjoy myself.

Today I woke up relaxed. Very, very relaxed. A nice way to wake up after the stress of Wednesday and Thursday. Unfortunately, this feeling didn't last but for a few hours, so I went for a walk. (Walking=destressing) I'm back now (with sugary things/candy) and feeling better.

I have a feeling my stress levels are higher than usual not only because of the strenuous babysitting, but because of my new medication (which is directly connected to my hormones). That may be offsetting me a bit, but I've been taking them for almost three weeks. *sighs* That and my flare-ups are happening more often.

Ugh, I'm rambling now and I'm not sure if this post made any sense, but thanks for reading. ;P

I haven't blogged in three days. No wonder I only have one follower. That and I'm not putting the link to this thing in the info of my stuff.

Sincerest apologies.

But I have good reasons. I don't feel like anyone really reads this thing. I miss Tumblr, with its constant feed and quick responses, etc. It's hard to blog under this thing. :/

I won't abandon this blog, not yet. I'm really trying to force make myself like this platform...

I hate this. I got triggered, and went to cry alone. But with no one to talk to about it/calm me down. This is what I needed Tumblr for, and now I don't have that. I feel like if I contacted an old Tumblr friend for support, that I would be a burden or an annoyance.

This cramping on the right side of my tummy is driving me mad. I know what it is (colon issues), but I'm afraid to take anything for it because I know it just comes back a little while after the issue is "resolved". Ugh asdghjkl I have dance class in 33 minutes too. >_<

You know what sucks?

Not being able to talk to your parents about anything. Of course they say otherwise, but really, I can't. That's what my Tumblr was for. It helped me rant and work out my problems without burdening my parents or sounding freaking ridiculous.

I haven't even been home 2 hours before I break down. This stress is awful, yet I'm not exactly sure where this stress is coming from....

And here I go, censoring myself again. I really shouldn't be, but I feel like my every word is being judged. I don't feel like I have a safe haven to express myself anymore. :(