My Mother Has Breast Cancer And I Am Using It As An Excuse

The guilt that feels like love, and the love that becomes an excuse.

I keep telling people it's not the right time, that I'll go after my 30th birthday. My mom is getting married — she's going to need help planning. My grandpa's divorce isn't finalized and he can't deal with the lawyer alone. Not to mention he almost died earlier this year. Just collapsed, out of nowhere, and for a few hours nobody knew anything. Every time my phone lights up with his name I feel my chest do that thing. What if he gets sick again and I'm not here?

Then, as a fucking cherry on top—my mom got diagnosed. So, what kind of daughter would I be if I left?

My plan was always to leave. Leave my home, my town, my country. To keep moving and to experience as many corners of the world as possible.

But there's just too much going on right now, you know? A new job. Family stuff. Plans already in motion. Responsibilities. Real life.

Everyone nods in agreement when I say that. Like of course it's not the right time. Of course it makes sense. Of course you can't just go. You can't leave your stability.

But I get this annoying twinge in my stomach every time I say this out loud. Why are you agreeing with me?

I got the confirmation call about my mom's cancer on a random day. Out of the blue. I was on a work trip in New York. It was freezing. I was at some evening work outing when my phone rang. Not exactly the right setting for that kind of news — not that there's a right setting for that kind of news anyway.

With a sinking feeling in my heart, I ended the call, stepped away and started crying so much that I left.

But on the flight back home, I felt…relief.

Because now I had a reason. No one could go against it. Shit, I couldn't go against it. I mean, you don't leave when your mother is sick. That's not even a debate. That's just who you are — a good daughter, a present daughter, someone who shows up.

So, just like that, the door I'd been circling for years closed.

---

Having real reasons to stay make it almost impossible to be honest with yourself. I have reasonable reasons. My mother has cancer. My grandfather is ill. I have loads of family stuff going on right now. These are not things I invented. This is my life.

But I've noticed that I reach for these reasons a little too fast. I immediately start thinking of stuff I have to deal with and I exhale slowly.

The guilt is the hardest part to write about honestly. Well, the thing is it doesn't feel like guilt. It feels a whole lot like love— devotion, loyalty, being the kind of person who doesn't abandon people when things get hard. And I do love them. I genuinely, completely love them. That part is not the lie. But I've let that love answer questions it was never asked.

I've let it stand in for things I haven't said. I've used the people I love — their needs, their pain, as a reason not to have to look directly at what I want and ask myself the question I've been avoiding for years.

That's the part that makes me feels..uncomfortable with myself.

I look at my sick mother and somewhere underneath the love and the fear, there is a small, ugly, thought: “but what about me?”

But I don't dare say it out loud. Instead, I lean into the resentment I feel.

I resent how hard this is. I resent that some people get to just…go. They get to leave and figure it out and the weight they leave behind is so much lighter than mine. I resent the heavy weight of obligation. I resent that I can see all of this so clearly and still can't move.

I resent myself most for understanding the whole mechanism and still letting it run.

When you stay, you're called “responsible, loyal, mature, grounded.”

Nobody pulls you aside and asks if you've really thought it through. Staying just happens and everyone quietly respects you for it.

Leaving is the thing that needs something like a thesis defense. Leaving needs a plan. It needs a timeline. You need to show that you haven't completely lost your mind. But even if you have all these sorted out, someone will still ask if it's really the right time and you'll feel the question hit that soft spot it always finds. Then you'll fold a little and wait for the right time which does not come.

---

Am I weird for thinking a lot of people feel the same way?

You want to leave, but you can't. You are stuck between the life you're reaching for and the life that needs you right here, right now. The guilt that feels like love. The way both of those things exist at the same time and neither one cancels the other out.

We're not bad people for wanting things. We're not bad daughters or bad friends for having a life full of longing that exists completely separately from how much we love the people we're staying for. But we treat it like we are. We swallow our desires and wanting, so no one questions whether we really love them.

There will always be something else. There is always something else. Life does not clear a path and step back and say — okay. Now. Nothing is in the way anymore. Go.

That moment doesn't exist. I think I've known that for longer than I've been willing to admit.

So I'm left with this question: How do you love people and still not lose yourself completely? How do you hold someone's hand through a difficult time while you keep your own hand free?

I don't know. I'm still here. I'm still saying it's not the right time. I still get that annoying twinge in my stomach every time everyone immediately agrees. I don't know how to deal with that, but I'm starting to think that twinge is the most honest thing about me right now and this story I’m telling myself about stability has less to do with safety and more to do with a crippling fear.

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Thank you, Feifei, for your contributions!