I’ve recently made weekend travel plans to marseille from paris. Me and my two friends are travelling on the fly, uncertain where exactly we’ll stay, whether we’ll camp in provence, etc. It sounds fantastic - young, carefree, adventuresome - a liberty that i haven’t felt since i was twenty, and the idea of the trip had me very excited. Only, as soon as I made the flight reservations I began to have an anxiety attack. And I came to realize, that I expect something bad to happen and I’m terrified to leave the familiarity of my schedule and my home.
I think I became so used to waiting for bad news, for waiting for loss, fearing loss, experiencing it finally (not to mention myriad other non-cancer-related familial trials, deaths, and illnesses) that I’m scared to move, for fear of one more struggle, one more emergency. I’m terrified of the unknown, feeling that i’m walking on the edge of a cliff, if i don’t walk perfectly i’ll fall into nothingness. So to make travel plans without certain lodging, a sight-seeing itinerary, etc. has tensed my heart.
Since my mom died, I don’t feel safe. Safe from what, I don’t know. There’s nothing tangible that I’m afraid of. The fear, the anxiety, has no name. I’m simply afraid of not knowing what to expect. I’m simply afraid of the unknown. Because I guess the unknown, in many ways, means loss. If you are removed from the known, from the familiar, then in a sense you are losing the familiar.
This more abstract fear is met with something very rational, considering my experiences of death and loss: when I go somewhere I’m afraid that I’ll never return. I’m afraid that I’ll never see people again. It seems all too possible that life will end suddenly and good-bye will never be hello again. I’m terrified that going on this trip - harmless and innocent fun that it is - will mean that i never see my husband or my family again. It is paranoid, yes, and I wish I wasn’t plagued by these thoughts, yet they persist.
And then there’s a sense of guilt, as if I don’t deserve to have this fun when my poor father’s at home in the US alone and sad and then my husband is at work. While I was a full-time caregiver for my mom, I used to feel this way even when I just went out one night. I didn’t deserve it, I was a bad person for wanting to leave for the evening, for spending money, for doing things that weren’t an obligation or a responsibility, for choosing to be with a friend instead of spending the evening with my mother. I would feel so badly about these things that I would awake in the morning and vomit, regardless of whether I drank anything or not. I think I continue to feel this way out of habit, and familiarity, if nothing else. These are feelings I’m familiar with, they are my framework, and if I let go of them, then I really am in a different phase of my life - a post-mama, post-caregiver phase of life.
I’ll go on the trip, of course, despite these stupid feelings and in the hope that in facing them I’m renewed in myself and find a way to be able to enjoy life after loss beyond the residues of loss.
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