Lost

Have you ever had a life altering event threaten the very existence of who you know yourself to be…who others know you to be?  

I think about this question often.  Not just in the sense of me wondering about the changed person my mom will become but also in the ways  my brother and I will be forever changed….and those who are closest will be forced to change as well.

I have often felt lost in this dumpster fire…wondering who I am and who I am becoming, if I will like myself after this (because I’ll be honest, I was just starting to dig that chick at 43 years old!), if others would still love me…if there would still be enough good in me to love  The emotions we’ve experienced in the last 6 months have completely buried me.  We are in survival mode and I have no doubt that will wreak havoc on our bodies for years to come because it’s unhealthy to have this much cortisol coursing through your veins, especially for long periods of time.  

More than that, it’s the unprocessed emotions, the rawness, the visions and sounds of your mother fighting to survive, the countless infections she has battled, and the absolute concern of her not receiving proper care that is directly connected to how well she will recover, which brings obvious emotions.  But it’s also the anger, frustration, sadness and absolute bitterness of experiencing a broken system that you’ve now realized doesn’t give a shit about your mom or family despite paying all those taxes. Then getting more angry when you start to do a deep dive on what exactly your taxes are used for. Being struck by how much greed is in corporations especially healthcare, it’s realizing that healthcare is for-profit and they don’t care about your wellness.

It’s about learning how unregulated air ambulance are, and how deeply corporations are buried into our political system. It’s learning the shear amount of people who are killed or injured every year at airports across the US, but these accidents are a rare occurrence in other countries. Then it’s leaning why that phenomenon exits.

It’s the heartbreak of finding out some friends and family you thought would have your back in times of struggle and do everything in their means to support you, just don’t, and remain silent. Even more, the hurtful words they use to kick you when you are already down…like questioning if this is the way our mom would want to live, implying we had some kind of control of her outcome and just made a bad decision. To state the obvious, I’m sure this wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice of living, but it was also beyond our control in a foreign country and without a healthcare directive or power of attorney.  

It’s the tireless and endless work we have done researching how to get our mom home, travel insurance, programs for her medical treatment, rehabilitation we can adopt to help our mom in the present.  It’s the countless emails, letters and phone calls reaching out to the embassy, senators, representatives, the POTUS, department of transportation, lawyers, medical professional, the Red Cross, social media influencers, podcasters, media outlets, PR companies and following every possible lead that has been suggested and experiencing both the rise of hope and then another absolute disappointing and heart shattering blow.  They have impacted us to the core.  Each failed mission, each heartbreak chipping away at our very existence, at our soul and heart.

All of a sudden, I felt like we were living our own version of the movie John Q.  (Great movie with Denzel Washington.  Would highly recommend, especially if you need help understanding the emotion behind this post!). I saw Denzel’s character in a new light…now we were the one’s fighting our country’s own bureaucracy and big league insurance companies. We are doing everything we can to save our mom’s life. The thoughts of what we would be willing to do for our mom were dark and deep and were actually quite alarming to me.  And then came the thoughts of quitting….quitting work, family, friends….quitting life.  I began to really worry about who I was becoming, about my mental health and if I would actually survive this dumpster fire.   I wasn’t the only one who worried either.  Close friends and family also shared their concerns about the dark place I was in.   Where did my love and light go?  I have no idea!  I literally turned around one day and she was gone!  I used to be a person full of compliments to strangers, random acts of kindness, a loyal and loving family member/friend/coworker, I have always been easy to laugh.  Now all of those things I have loved about myself had disappeared and were replaced with anger, bitterness and very dark thoughts.  Who had I become and now what?

I reached out to my counselor back home to see if she’d make an exception to see me virtually.  I started talking, and talking and talking.  I still talk at her because there is so much mess in our life it’s hard for an outsider to track the pace unless they are always up to speed, and a lot happens in two weeks.  I think of our sessions as a way to barely keep my head above water and I am so grateful for this lifeline. I look forward to a day when I can get back into her teachings, which will mean my life has calmed down and I will once again have a moment to focus on my own well-being and breathe.

I recently had a conversation with a coworker friend who I haven’t spoken to since this happened and she said “it’s really great to hear your voice again and see that this event hasn’t changed your core”.  The simple fact that underneath all of the damage, she could still see me, my heart and core of my humanity brought me to tears….ugly tears.  My soul sister in Kansas City echoed the same sentiment and she definitely saw some of the worst of my days. These conversations were confirmation that I might just survive this and that the person I once knew myself to be might show back up again….changed forever of course, but still the same at the core.

Miesha touched on this in a previous blog post….about the rawness of love and that it isn’t always beautiful.  That sometimes it’s simply and quite literally being someone’s lifeline and going to the ends of the earth to help them.  In her words: 

“These moments require us to love amongst the ugly, within the ruin and around the dark corners of life and because of that, we learn, if we can muster the strength, that love doesn’t require the easy way. That love can actually multiply and expand and overwhelm us in the scenery of struggle. 

It’s not a fluffy, romantic love. No one wants to leave their family and work to sit in a hospital room 8 hours a day with their mom in a coma. But the love… the love existing behind such an action is inspiring. It doesn’t feel inspiring… but its core is.”

-Miesha

Clearly those of us closest to this life shattering event will be forever changed.  We will have scars we will carry for the rest of our lives.  But there is hope….hope that the very core of all of our existence and own humanity will remain unchanged and one day we will be able to see and maybe even become the love and light in the world again.  I look forward to that day!  There is a Portuguese quote that we started hearing from doctors in Portugal pretty early on in this journey:  “Hope is the last thing to die!”