March

 I have always despised hospitals. The white walls. The smell of sanitizer, and all things sterile. Well now I get to have an affair with one, it's a leech not wanting to let me go. My mom was admitted for health reasons. The thing they don't tell you is how helpless hospitals make you feel especially if you're a visitor. You get to watch while your loved one suffers and is in pain. You try to advocate and make sure you tell the nurses and doctors all the information they need, but they already started the game of isolation. Your voice just happens to be background noise. The rest of the family come and go. But I stay. 

Daughters don't get to leave. To be a daughter is to be everything all at once, Yet I keep sounding like a broken record. Repeating myself. Funny enough no one actually wonders how you still manage to stand. I repeat the I'm Fine mantra over and over till the words become numb on my lips. 

Mom says not to worry, but that is a mother's job. To make everything seem like it's fine when in reality it's a far cry from it.  I wish someone would just tell me the truth. But I am playing Tetris. Nothing makes sense. 

The real friends come, the others... well they are just sympathetic smiles.

4 months, 1 month, ER visits, hospital, and it goes on. . .

Truth is I don't get to be anything else but "fine". When in reality I don't know whether to scream, cry or laugh. It's all becoming overwhelming. 

I'm exhausted. The flame in me has turned to embers. 

Decisions, choices, they are put on hold. Because I can't juggle. So instead I take it one step at a time. One day, one moment. I work, I eat when I remember to, and I take care of the dogs, all while thinking of you, and the what-ifs. 

Hospitals ... a place where we all wander in states of worry, but plaster the I'm Fine, for we are only visitors walking in the haze of their pain.