We’re Not Normal Anymore

It’s been a little over two months since Liam’s initial Xray.

Tonight we went to a birthday party. It was our first normal social event since cancer. The big kids immediately dove headlong into a tackle football game while Liam watched. David and I sat in disbelief and sadness. I don’t know why I expected that after not seeing him for two months, they would give up one evening of playing running games, but I did. The reality of this being his life forever is so hard to bear.

Even if he gets the least invasive of the three life altering, invasive surgeries, he will never run again. He’s not interested in rotationplasty which would amputate his leg, but let him run. And if he saves his leg, running is out. There is too much risk of breaking the donor bone or rod and / or splintering the ends where it attaches into his own bone.

The grief and sadness was so heavy.

Then I heard in conversation that the rest of them were all talking of going to the beach and, of course, I wasn’t included. Again, my new normal. But such a fresh, realization of the depth of the valley we were in.

You get marginalized when you’re in painful situations, not because people don’t care about you, but because your life no longer fits the puzzle. Our world stopped and everyone else’s kept on spinning. And when you get an hour or two to re-enter, you realize you don’t sync.

Moms are clucking over their teenagers tackling each other to the ground over a football and worrying they might get hurt and you’re watching your son hop on crutches wondering if he’ll have to have his leg amputated.

You don’t get invited to anything anymore because everyone knows you don’t have time. When you finally feel safe to leave your child for an hour or two, none of your friends are available because their lives are a scheduled whirl of normal.

You long to have a normal conversation only to find yourself triggered when it happens. When someone talks about how busy their week is because they have appointments to get the rugs shampooed and they want to repaint the house you don’t even know what to do with the emotions rising inside of you. That is their life. It’s a necessary busy. But you’re in over your head researching cancer therapies and outcomes and your brain has trouble finding space for even ten minutes of listening to someone go on about the details of their house.

You just don’t fit anymore. And sometimes, that’s the loneliest part of it all.

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