My mum has a form of incurable but manageable cancer called multiple myeloma. She's 64 now and has been living with it since 2019. I'm in the UK so we don't have to worry about financial debt like other places due to health costs. I live at home with my parents, my two dogs, my older brother, and I'm 25 years old. I'm training to be a teacher in September and I'm super excited. I might even get the chance to move abroad, and as someone who lost a lot of their early 20s to covid and wanting to protect my mum with a weak immune system… it's like life might actually start.
But that's the thing. I constantly think about how my mum will one day die. My Dad, too, but it's like her mortality became so much clearer to me in 2019. I truly hit rock bottom that year, and my friends helped me through, and I had some therapy but I could probably do with way more therapy – maybe private therapy.
I just want to live in the moment. She's in remission. She's doing well. Her medical team are great. We're going for a 2 day trip to Austria in August. There's no reason for me to worry as much as I do, but I do. I'm also reluctant to move abroad because I feel like I have to spend as much time as I physically can with her. Back in 2017, 2018, 2019… I would've been in London by now, or the US, or Canada.
I don't know. I just feel like I'm so hung up on mortality that I can't live my life. I don't want the day to come where I lose my parents and I regret spending the last decade or two worrying about that day coming. It gets worse around Christmas, too, and I just want to fix my brain. I know it went through something traumatic, and it never healed properly. I just want to fix my brain and stop worrying and thinking about morbid thoughts because they take up way too much space in my brain and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't having a seriously bad impact on my life.