her hair had just grown back

note: this post was originally from our stillness, a now defunct blogging project.

I can’t help but mention my mother in everything. I got gingko leaves tattooed on my hip because we had a tree in the front yard when I was younger, and she showed me how to press its leaves in her books. My first tattoo is a mythical deer from the animated Chinese film we watched together when I was a kid. It’s the most Buddhist thing I own. My mom has a mole where the Buddha's mark is supposed to be. I want to include her in everything.

Today, my mom is going to find out at her follow up that her cancer has likely returned, and she'll have to resume chemo again. I've known for the past week because my dad decided to entrust me with more preliminary information to hide from my mother so she can remain in unknowing bliss. I fought back tears every time she said the words, “Next time.”

I find myself in a perpetual state of grief. I see people I knew in strangers on the airplane and in restaurants, and I am continually reminded of the several loose ends I purposely left untied on the off chance that one day, I will be brave enough to tie them back again. The more new people I meet, the more I'm reminded of how hard it is to find ones worth sticking around for.

These past few months have been some of the best in my life. I know that it's hard to believe it considering my mother's current health and my current accumulated distress, but I always tell people that the circumstances during my first 20s were worse. Life events used to thrash at me in unceasing cacophony, but I was experiencing everything for the first time then. I’ve been housing insecure, food insecure, harassed, threatened. Crises take their time with me now. It's quiet. I'm no longer enduring.

I guess this is what it means to grow around your hurt. I'm realizing that as time passes, there are less and less things to celebrate and more and more things to mourn. I'm realizing that this probably won’t be the happiest I will be, but this will definitely be the least sad I'll feel. There will only be more things to carry. Less joys to hold on to.

Inevitably, I will tell my mother about my girlfriend, and inevitably, my mother will pass. We will decide whether the wedding or the funeral comes first.

This is the most ill-equipped I have ever been in my life. Happy Pride.