#shutupsteph

the following day was their real birthday. it didn’t go as well. we shopped around at some stores adam likes but we didn’t have a clear plan, which i struggle with. my anxiety, or perhaps neurodivergence, makes me struggle when i don’t have a plan, steps to follow. i also struggle with making choices. i need to defer to others, i honestly find it painful to pick anything, ever.

i decided the plan would be “no plan” because that’s how adam likes it. the first place we went to went great. somewhere adam had been looking forward to opening back up. i hate shopping, but we stayed for ages. stayed so long my back started to hurt. but adam loved it. but we didn’t know where to go next. i put too much pressure on adam to think of fun things they’d like to do. they wanted me to drive and we would just go wherever, but i can’t go if i don’t have a destination. they wanted me to just go, but i couldn’t. i could just give them more options. birthdays can be hard for people, and since adam was having some birthday blues they needed me to make some choices. but i still couldn’t. i tried. i was still too afraid of doing the wrong thing, going the wrong way. adam was of course an angel as always, and didn’t mind that i was struggling, but i failed to make it perfect, and like every other day, it was hard.

the “no plan” plan ultimately failed.

i remember being little, riding in the backseat of the car with my brother, my mom and dad on the front. they asked what we should get for dinner. i remember thinking “whenever i say what i want, they have to either say no, or go somewhere they don’t want to go. i don’t want to make them do either of those things. so i will do what my brother does.” so i said “anywhere is fine with me.” and ive said it every single time someone has asked me a question like that since.

it’s grown inside me all these years. now i cannot say what movie i’d like to watch, what music i’d like to listen to, where i’d like to sit. only when i am alone do i make choices according to what i want, not according to what i think other people might want. if someone tries to force me to pick what i want i physically cannot. i cannot ask for things. i start to panic. i get hot, flushed. i have to fight my anxiety, my emotions, which begin to choke me. my boss pressed me to choose where we got lunch from today, i started listing the places i know she likes. she asked me what i was in the mood for, and i said the things i’m used to saying in these situations… “i’m not very hungry, and i can get something i like from anywhere! i just ate a few hours ago. you are much longer ago, what are you feeling hungry for? i’ll just grab something from there!” thankfully, mercifully, they always let me get away with it.

i feel like i need to relearn how to think about what i want sometimes. i have to learn to not be hurt when someone isn’t enthusiastic about what i suggest, or shoots me down, or suffers through something they like less. i eat at places i don’t like, i watch movies and videos i don’t want to watch, i listen to music i don’t want to listen to, i do things i dont want to do. as im writing this i don’t see myself really changing. i will always be afraid to ask for what i want. right now in my life i feel like i deserve to even less.

adam’s birthday ended up with me sick in the bathroom. i ate too much of leftovers from their birthday dinner. homemade hummus and baked pita with zataar and baked brie and homemade tzatziki sauce and goofy puff pastry pinterest creations.

when we had gotten home from shopping, aunt patty was still at our home, she had made dad lunch. he was sleeping, she was cleaning in the kitchen. she is not subtle in her disapproval of our living conditions. (she later texted me to clean out old food from the fridge. food that was 3 days old and that was going to clean out the next day when adam and i were planning on taking garbage to the dump. adam can’t clean out old food from the fridge because they can’t tolerate the smell of cold food.)

mom had cut a slice from adam’s birthday cake. i still put candies in it and sang to them anyway. it felt awful. we both cried. then we got high and i ate until i was sick.

me apologetically calling to adam on the other side of the bathroom door to tell them to quickly play some music because i was about to yarf and i know they can’t stand the sound of retching. them asking to come inside to be with me, and me refusing to let them because i know they hate it. them turning the music up louder when i actually started puking.

dad has asked to go back home. about a week ago, uncle bill was talking to dad and discovered that dad had forgotten that he has brain cancer. dad has been so sick, but we didn’t realize he had lost grasp of what is happening to him. uncle bill had to break the news to dad that he is dying. dad’s mood has changed since, and he wants to be at his home, not mine. i’ve wasted so much time not being with him while he’s been here. so many days when i avoid his room because it’s too hard. i’ve left him alone with mom too much. i’m a coward, a bad person, a bad daughter, a bad friend, a bad employee, a bad partner.

when dad is in the hospital or a facility, i am with him day and night. getting him water or adjusting his pillows or calling for a nurse at the slightest sign of greater need. but at home, i am useless. i sit by him and try to act normal try to be cheerful. i have no idea what to do. i sit by him and feel like ants are crawling under my skin, like i want to sob. i feel like i am i’m not strong enough to be by his side. i help in all the ways i can, but it’s not enough. i am constantly on the phone, constantly working and worrying from the moment i wake up to the early hours of the morning when i finally fall asleep, but i have failed to support my dad emotionally through this for the past 2 months since he came back from rehab bed bound. uncle tommy was here the other day, we visited for a while and then he went in to see dad. i heard uncle tommy say “i hear you’re going back home soon!” and i heard dad say “i hope so. wanna get out if this place.”

i know that dad has never liked this house. it was my grandparents house, and they were a whole ‘nother story. dad always hated being here. i know he wants to be at his own home, with his things. i know he loves me and wouldn’t want to hurt me. i know he knows i love him. i changed the room he and mom are staying in. we made it unrecognizable. totally changed all the furniture, the lighting, the window dresssings. we put pictures of family on the walls and a hung digital photo frame of more family photos and installed a huge tv. we tried to make it different, make it nice.

it is safer for him here. this house is more accessible, EMS can get up the driveway. but that doesn’t matter as much anymore. dad hasn’t walked in two months and he has asked to go home. where i will see him even less. cleaning the kitchen won’t help him anymore. making him breakfast won’t be happening anymore. i will bring meals and medicine to his house and i will continue to be his primary secretary for doctors, therapists, nurse practitioners, insurance, equipment, and transportation. but none of that will make my dad feel better.

today when i got home from work mom was outside with the dogs. i dropped my work bag full of storytime books down on the porch to make room for her in my arms, where she sobbed. quiet, pained, high pitched, desperate, angry, sobs.

something has to change, she says. she can’t take dad being so sick. she needs more help.

the thing is, we have so much help, but no one can save us.

we have family and medical professionals at our door every day. we have so much help, but we are still drowning. we have no idea if anything we are doing is right.

i wish i could ask dad what was right.

monday is adam’s birthday. adam, who i have trapped. adam, who lives in this house with my dying father and grief broken, schizophrenic mother. with our animals who all need to go to the vet for various ailments. in our house which is filthy and has more broken things than functional things. in our house which has mice poop on the countertops, mold on the sunlights, dead light bulbs in every fixture, squirrels scratching in the ceiling.

yet adam remains here with me. they help me get through each day. i wish i had the energy, the money, the capacity, to give him a nice day on his birthday, something unforgettable to pay them back for everything they do. but i cant, so i will try to cook some things he likes and i will give him small gifts and i will try not to cry at all.

i will hope that when the worse times come and go, that he will be less burdened, that he won’t resent me for these months of constant agony and upheaval, that we won’t be too scarred to be happy.

everyday is very hard. i take dad breakfast and then i clean until i have to go to work or until someone arrives at the door. i make phone calls, i answer phone calls. “ok thank you ma’am we will expect you sometime between the hours of noon and 2pm, thank you so much.” “no, we still do not have those supplies” “what does pallative care mean?” “is occupational therapy coming this week?” “what is the status of the urology referral?” “we think dad has lost hearing in his right ear.” “adam baby please don’t quit your job” …after work i come home to mom and dad and adam and whoever else may be there and eat and help with dad and if i have any energy i will clean or put whisky in some soda and watch a movie (in which someone will inevitably have cancer) which adam may make it halfway through before they succumb to their exhaustion and then it’s time to lay in the dark and spiral.

when i sit in the room with dad i feel intrusive. he cannot speak to me. i’m afraid to turn on a movie or show to watch with him, for fear that he wishes for quiet or dark but cannot ask for it. afraid to talk to him because he has difficulty understanding. i don’t want him to have to try to understand. i hate talking to him like he is a child. i hate feeling like i don’t know how to talk to him. if i stay out of his room, i feel cowardly. stupid for wasting what little time i have left with him. there’s a knife twisting in my heart either way.

my mother needs help turning dad over to keep him clean. she will not allow adam or i to help. dad should be in a skilled care facility, but he wasn’t improving and they told us he would need to be transitioned into long term care. it came to the point were we would have to sell our house, so we brought him home. maybe we should’ve sold the house. maybe we still should.

mom is in charge of dad’s medicines, and currently every other aspect of his care as well. dad is bed bound. mom was a nurse, like him. she is in that room with him almost all day, every day. she is paranoid schizophrenic, and she is also on quite a lot of pain medication. so much that she falls asleep sitting up, falls asleep mid conversation, buys things in her sleep, eats chocolate in her sleep. i help as much as i can, but i have to be careful, she turns into a teeth bareing, hissing, hazard if you don’t play your cards exactly right.

you cannot ever show doubt in her ability to take care of dad. you may try to say something like “can i grab you his insulin from the fridge?” because you know she has forgotten to check his blood sugar before a meal. or maybe, “can i empty his cath bag for you?” because you see that it is full, but she will not be grateful, she will be angry. you have to though, and you have to suffer whatever she puts you through in retaliation.

dad married her to save her from her abusive family. he was always loyal to her, even though they are very different, even though they have opposite dispositions, even though she has always been difficult. he has been her protector and teacher their whole lives together. she has always been nonsensical, childish, stubborn, paranoid. i never knew she was schizophrenic until this year. i am so afraid of what she will become when he is completely gone.

we need so much help, but mom is suspicious of all help we receive. when people bring food over, mom begs them to stay longer. but she is upset and annoyed when we get a message from anyone asking to come by. when they try to help with dad’s care, mom feels as if they are over stepping, that they don’t think she can handle it, like they are going to take him away from her. maybe they should.

i thought my situation was bad before. before all this, i laid awake at night worrying about my job at the library. worried about managing my anxiety as i sang in front of families at story time, tried to manage my anxiety enough when interacting with patrons and my coworkers to seem stable. working at a library seemed so idyllic, but not only does it involve public speaking which i am borderline incapable of, but the local libraries are under attack from a hostile library board full of homophobic shitheads. everyday when i go into work i get bad news. more drama, more fuckers hatemongering in the community in order to say they are protecting children, when of course we know they just want to perpetuate a world where queer children would rather die than suffer the discrimination of the world their family enables. they’ve told us we have to remove as books containing “gender ideology” from our shelves. this is not hyperbole, this is what is actually happening in at least 4 libraries in east tennessee right now. books are already off the shelves and they are demanding more be removed.

now the teeth vibrating brain scrambling hands shaking anxiety which i’ve coped with for two years has a new companion. my dad has terminal brain cancer and i will never have another normal conversation with him again. i don’t know if he will ever get a little better again. mom and dad and adam and i will keep getting through each day and we know that things will only get worse. my brother has been sick for two months with a cold and cannot help because dad’s white blood cell count is too low. i miss my brother. i worry about him everyday.

i have missed so much in the time since dad’s diagnosis. it feels like i am still in september of last year. i haven’t been able to see my friends, haven’t been able to show up for them. i haven’t be able to leave my town. i fight tooth and nail to do the best i can at home and at work. each day is so long, but there’s never enough time to feel like i got enough done.

a home health social worker is coming tomorrow. i’ll be at work, so i am making a list of things for mom to ask about.

i will make a walmart delivery order to get ingredients to make adam bread and hummus and dolmas and spanakopita on monday.

it is now 2:23am february 27th, 2026.

dad asked me to cut his hair tomorrow. he needs me to cut it short with an electric razor. his treatments have made it start falling out in big patches. we still don’t even know if the treatments are helping. there’s too much swelling in his brain to see if the tumor has gotten smaller.

the heat isn’t working in our house. it stopped working on friday. uncle tommy came to look at the unit but couldn’t figure out the problem. he came back later with a truck full of firewood.

things keep breaking. nothing can be fixed if you have no money. if dad were healthy he would be able to fix everything like he always has.

it’s 28 degrees outside. he and mom are warm in the guest bedroom, uncle tommy also brought two space heaters.

i don’t know how i keep going. i just focus on getting through each day as they come but i can’t prepare well for tomorrow while i’m just trying to get through today. my anxiety coping strategy has always been to overthink and over prepare. now i spend my time skirting around thinking about anything because i get instantly overwhelmed and start crying/having panic attacks. it’s exhausting. i’m so overwhelmed and scared and furious. all i do is take care of my people but i still feel useless and whiny and mean and miserable. i cry all day and night or i make myself be like a robot. it won’t get better. i haven’t had a good happy restful day since the diagnosis. every single day has been hard and i am falling to pieces.

this could be my last christmas with dad. they said 2 years or less. thanksgiving was grim. we worked so hard. dad ate well but he didn’t talk because he can’t. we turned on return of the jedi and he watched it some. he thanked us for dinner as he was going to lie back down.

i have been trying to plan homemade christmas gifts for him and everyone but i haven’t been able to do anything christmas related. thinking about it makes me sick. i had to decorate the library for christmas last week. it all feels like torture.

i can’t begin to process my job right now. i can’t think about it. i’m so fucking stupid. i’m teaching and playing and performing for children and families at the library. i couldn’t do this shit before the stuff with dad and now i get to do it when i can barely fucking function. i can’t believe i have to do my literal fucking nightmare of public speaking three days a week. i just need it all to stop.

i know i should be counting my blessings instead of whatever this is. fuck that.

in a few hours i will wake up on december 1st in an empty bed in a house with no heat. i will call thompson oncology to schedule dad an iv infusion before his next round of chemotherapy pills next week. i will get into a shitty car with no heat and go get mom’s medicine in oak ridge when the pharmacy opens. i will buy marshmallows to roast over the fire. i will come home and make breakfast. uncle tommy will come back with a new thermostat but that won’t fix the problem. i will shave dads hair. i will clean the rust from the wood stove vent to hopefully help with adam’s headaches and asthma. i will bathe the dogs. i will get that far and then figure out what comes next.

Maybe 10 minutes later, a fluffy bird flew from one trees to another in our front yard. It was big. I thought it was a crow at first. Moving my head around to look between the leaves and limbs I found it. It was an owl. A tawny oval in a big green summer tree at dusk. It started hooting and sounded just like Jason had. Jason called back to it. I cracked the front door open and asked Adam if he wanted to see an owl. They said “Of course!?” and hurried to put their shoes on. The owl flew back to the tree it must’ve been on before, and I thought I had found it amongst the limbs and leaves of that tree, but it looked bigger. Then there were three calls. A male owl, a female owl, and Jason. The owls got loud, Adam said they sounded like monkeys.

Last week I saw a groundhog get hit by a car. I stopped to let it pass, but another car came up the opposite side of the road and even though the groundhog had made it almost to the grass, when the car came by it panicked and sprinted back the way it came. I’m sure the driver of the car saw him at the last moment, he has huge. I’m sure they felt the impact. I’m sure they saw me in my car covering my face with both hands. I shouldn’t have looked to see it dead and dying. I wish I could stop remembering it soon. I forget things so quickly, I hope that memory speeds up in slipping away.

After work I went that same way back home. I had meant to drive by the dam to avoid the scene of the crime, but I was on autopilot until I turned onto Longfield. I started giving myself a pep talk, telling myself no mater what state the groundhog was in, it was over now. It was another small tragedy in an ocean of tragedies in the circle of life. I told myself maybe the vultures had already gotten to it, nourishing themselves on it, growing big and strong enough to circle high in the sky with their families. When I rounded the bend where it happened, the groundhog was were I saw it last, mostly intact, with two vultures on either side of it. I stopped my car and cried there for the second time that day. Thomas said he and dad saw a big dead groundhog with vultures pecking at it on a road in claxton last week. I wonder how many groundhogs are killed crossing roads this time of year.

Misty at work was supposed to go on a camping trip over Memorial Day. When I saw her after her time off I asked her how it was. She said they had to put their cat down, so they canceled their plans. She also said a dog was hit by a car in front of their house and died in their yard. She said she was too afraid to approach it because she thought she might get bitten. She said the dog died before her husband could get to them. The dog had no tags, so she called animal control and they told her they don’t help in situations like theirs. She said her husband took the dog’s body to the landfill.

Last Friday Adam and I rounded a corner on a curvy road and had to stop suddenly for a fox to cross right in front of us. It darted by, but it was like it was in slow motion. It was stunning, but more stunning still was the sight of a baby fox rushing out to the middle of the road to follow, but it was too startled and confused by our car, so it made it halfway, pranced around a bit and then shot back into the bushes on the side it came from. We drove away and Adam said they hoped it got to its mother. I told them not to worry, that if it was too afraid to cross its mother would come back for it. Tom said mother bears have such a reputation for being aggressively protective of their children, but he once learned that if a cub wanders off, its mother will abandon it easily. He said he always thought that was strange, given their reputation. I hope foxes are different.

Life feels numb, unbearably painful, and overwhelmingly beautiful all at once. The dozens of cicada husks in a jar beside me, pictures of my cousin smiling with wet eyes after her engagement in korea, the firetruck in the funeral home parking lot, the children filling my library for summer reading, the children dying in gaza, the first fireflies of the year, the dog’s body in a landfill, the owls that sound like monkeys in the hills of Tennessee. I see and feel it all, but I don’t know how long I will remember.

Okay so the past few months I’ve for some reason been thinking about my and my boyfriends future family (pets/kids) once we finally get enough money to get our own place (we live with his parents) and finally get married and I won’t be scared to live in the place I live in. (I have separation/abandonment issues with people/things/places) so I stay in my room the whole time.

ANYWAY— I’ve had a bit of weird dreams lately about wanting to be pregnant and getting my cat a little (cat) brother finally. So these dreams have been affecting me so much bc I have not only anxiety and “severe” depression, but PTSD. Aka my dreams seem overly real and I get flashbacks throughout the day. Also when I dream, the majority of the time I don’t know and I’ll remember during the day as if it’s a memory, not a daydream or something clearly made up. Most dreams are about my trauma but some are the reoccurring for months about something random. So these past months is having a baby.

Side note: I’m actually terrified of giving birth... my grandmother died giving birth to my youngest aunt. Yes it was the doctor’s fault and it was 50 years ago, but it still terrifies me. Also I’m currently at a state in my life where I can barely care for myself, how the hell can I bring a human being into the world and make sure they thrive.

Okay so point of the story is that last night I had such a realistic dream about pregancy and it’s been fucking with me all day. I was pregnant and I was telling my parents. Since my parents are doctors (in real life too) they were giving me advice on how to care for myself now that I have decided to keep the baby. They both told me separately (they are divorced so I always see them separately) that I am 4 months pregnant. My dad actually said 4-5 months but yeah. So I went home to tell my boyfriend and that’s where I woke up.

I woke up thinking it was real. My body looked the same as it did in the dream. My stomach and all. I was terrified. It took me a good 5 minutes of laying in bed and convincing myself what reality really is and what my mind has tricked me into thinking is real.

I’m probably going to buy a pregnancy test tomorrow or the next day just to stop my paranoia. I’m 99.5% sure I’m not pregnant. Yet here I am not able to sleep over a stupid ass dream that probably will somehow haunt me when I finally close my eyes tonight.