Being Enough

I wasn’t going to write about this, but then I thought…you put everything else out on your blog why not this? Speak your truth. One of my favorite quotes is by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He said “You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say”. So here it is. I’m not looking for a whole bunch of comments…just putting out there what goes through my messed up mind and shattered heart.

As many of you know Anna loves plants. She has way more plants stuffed in her dorm room than the majority of people have in their whole house. I have absolutely no doubt. When she came home for Spring Break she left some of them here so that she doesn’t have so many to transport when she comes home for the summer. I don’t have any houseplants of my own. I am not good at them. When she left on Sunday I said something along the lines of “Oh boy you’re trusting me to keep all these plants alive” and then the next thought in my mind that I stopped the second before it fell out of my mouth was “I couldn’t even keep your Dad alive how can you trust me with your plants?”

And this is where I don’t need your comments because I know that Jason getting cancer wasn’t my fault and I made the best decisions I could at the time with the information I had. I know that….but also there’s part of me that doesn’t believe that. I didn’t love him enough. I didn’t ask the right questions. I should have gotten him in the trial instead of starting Avastin. I should have taken him down to Mayo. I should have quit working and spent more time with him. I just wasn’t enough. Nothing I did was enough. And he paid the price.

And that feeling of not being enough continues. Now I somehow have to be enough for my kids. I can’t fail another person in my family. And I know that I have help…and am very grateful for it…but at the end of the day I am their Mom…the only parent they have left. What other people see as strength….yeah…that’s actually fear…fear of letting them down…fear of messing up their lives more than losing their Dad already has. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning…love for my kids and a whole shit-ton of fear.