N.K. Murray

It has been some time since I’ve had the time to sit down and empty the chaos swirling inside my head here. Part of that is true – it’s been some time. I’ve had the time, but I haven’t felt strongly enough that the chaos needed to make its way from behind my tired eyes to the page and into the ether. I’m not sure I want people to see the table my Demons feast at every waking and unconscious moment for fear I’ll be viewed differently than the relatively careful image I choose to portray to the world. I’ve written here about my frenemies – their weight I bear as my own, the impact their presence has on my decisions, the strange comfort that comes from knowing that when all else crumbles around me they will remain.

This week has been particularly challenging for many reasons, though only one of which matters. We, and I use that term collectively for my Demons and I, made it through 2020 relatively unscathed. 2021 felt as most new years do – so fresh and so clean. The corner felt turned, and we looked forward to all of the things that 2020 stole from us – the rides, the races, the being in all of the places we couldn’t be last year. It was almost as though we had emerged from the mud and were going to shake it off like a dog after a bath.

And then Tuesday happened.

I have an odd confession to make. I have a penchant for Tuesdays. I like how the word sounds. I was born on a Tuesday and I think I love it because it’s definitely not Monday, and certainly not Wednesday or Thursday (the perpetual doldrums of the week). It’s not the race to hit 5pm on Friday only to be so tired from your work week that you can’t claim to have the energy to do all of the things you thought you might before that clock flipped to happy hour. It’s not Saturday, which always feels like a rush to cram in all of the things you don’t have time to do during the week, and absolutely not Sunday, where the malaise of the coming work week sets in as the day progresses. Tuesday is honestly quite the perfect day. There’s still the hope you’re going to be productive. There’s still time to get things done.

This Tuesday was like every other recently. Conference calls and conversations. Emails and excel workbooks. A brief moment in between calls to run and grab something to eat before I hop onto the next fire drill that requires my attention. My sister called me, as she does frequently and this time, this particular time, the Outlook gods saw fit to grant me the window to take her call without that convenient ‘Sorry I can’t talk right now’ option my iPhone gives me when it knows I’m juggling Skype, Slack, Zoom, Outlook and Asana while cramming my face with something my nutritionist would frown upon me eating. This time I answered, and she didn’t respond in her normal ‘halllloooo’.

I’m going to pause a moment here. I’m used to phone calls where people give me news that is less than positive. It’s the story of my life in many ways. Hundreds of calls relaying thousands of pieces of information all over the convenience of the phone, which should blunt the emotion of the content being delievered. Yet, it amplifies it. It always amplifies it. It’s always worse over the phone than in person, yet being on the phone allows me the ability to hide my facial expressions. The mute button allows me the freedom to emote without being heard. The phone gives my Demons exactly what they need to start preparing their feast.

I’ve heard my sister cry more times than I care to recollect. Each time is a sharp knife to the heart, carving away pieces that I know will bleed for the foreseeable future. This time was different. And it immediately, and I mean IMMEDIATELY threw me back 20 years ago. And 9 years ago. I was shaking so badly I dropped the fucking phone on my desk before she finished telling me she had cancer. My Demons might have well have snorted pure Colombian cocaine with the way they threw my system into jitterbug mode. Is it horrible I thought she was calling to tell me someone had passed away? Because, in what fucking universe is it even remotely possible to have lost both of your parents to cancer, only to be told your baby sister has it? You can’t tell me lightning can’t strike twice, because I’ve witnessed it striking us time and time again now.

I held it together on the phone with her. I had to. She didn’t need me hysterical and crying when she herself was hysterical and crying. We got off the phone, and I called hubby who was out of town. He knows I don’t call unless it’s important. He knew something was wrong, and I heard him ask the question and I lost it. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop pacing the hallway between my office and workout room trying to breathe because if I didn’t breathe, I was going to collapse because WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WAS HAPPENING.

And so the feast was laid.

My sister is one of an extremely minuscule minority of people who know my Demons and how I manage them and doesn’t judge me. She is literally all of the things I am not. She doesn’t mind that I drop f-bombs like Salt Bae with a porterhouse on a plate. She is the faithful partner to my faithless soul. She believes in things she can’t see, while I hold tight to those things I can control because it’s the only way I can stay sane. She’s a mom when I need her to be, because, I don’t have one anymore. She’s the person I can always ALWAYS count on to support me in all of the crazy shit I do. She shows up to my rides no matter what the weather, standing in the rain with the kids to make sure I see a friendly face as I cross the finish line. She comes over and cleans my house for me, when I call her half crying, half joking that long work days and passive aggressiveness was going to cause me to get divorced because I hadn’t vacuumed in 2 weeks. She asks me sweetly innocent questions, that I have to stop and contemplate because I’m not a sweetly innocent person. She is the person who trusts me so much, that she calls me to make sure google is correct. Hell…most times she calls me first because she knows I can wade through the online bullshit quickly. She is a wholly better human being than I am or ever will be. To contemplate that cancer dared to insert itself into her life, my life, our life again was nearly incomprehensible.

Except – it wasn’t, said my Demons. You see, it’s been in the back of my head for years now that there was no way the universe had received its pound of flesh from our family yet. Do you know what it’s like to live with the thought that every cough you get could be lung cancer, because you hung out every day with a man who smoked two and a half packs a day for the first 22 years of your life? That the ache in your back might not be from working out, that it could be because you grew up next to an industrial waste land that now triggers ads to ‘call us if you’ve been afflicted with (insert type of cancer here)’? That every time you have more than a couple drinks you think, is this going to give me liver cancer? Because those are the feasts my Demons have laid in me these past 20 years.

But, not her. Never her. She has been through too much. More than any one person, any one woman should be able to tolerate and still be the person she is today. To say it isn’t fair isn’t just a phrase to toss in here to fill the space – it is truly unfair. I told her on the phone I always expected it would be me. I’m the ‘healthy’ one. It was my turn. I was due for it. And honestly, I had prepared for it – what I would do, how I would go about dealing with it. Because that’s what I do. I think the worst, all the time, in every single situation, and plan for every fucking contingency and find a way to fix it.

I can’t fix this.

I can’t make her not have cancer. I can’t make her better. I can’t imbue her with my strength and my will and my FUCK YOU EVERYTHING attitude because this is BULLSHIT and make her not have fucking cancer. I can do every damned thing in this universe to support her, but I can’t make her not have cancer. I can’t make this not happen to us again. I have to bear witness to this fucking disease lopping off chunks of her life and her health and her sanity. I can tell her that it’ll be okay, but we both know I can’t guarantee anything.

As we parted on the phone call, she tells me, “Nicole, I don’t want you to worry.” She knows me better than that, and I tell her as much.

It’s what I do. I worry. About all of it. All of the time. So much so that I don’t sleep at night and the worry eats a hole in my stomach. The worry has become Worry, and has joined Anger and Grief and Depression and Doubt. The Demons meet around the table and prepare the most delightful feast to partake in over the course of the next days, weeks, months. They’ll ask me to join them, and when I demur, they’ll play their games with me. In those quiet moments when I’m trying to relax, they’ll have me walk down the paths Doubt has paved for me in my head. When I try to sleep, they’ll have Worry kick my sinuses, because what’s Worry without a little headache? When I try to hop on my bike, and let Anger do something valuable for a change, Depression and Doubt tell me I can’t.

I told my team. I told my boss. He asked me if I wanted time and I said no – that if I wasn’t working I would go insane. But that wasn’t truthful. If I don’t keep my mind occupied with the conference calls and conversations, emails and excels, my Demons will feast on the tenuous hold I have on the relatively careful image I choose to portray. Like a true Buffalonian with a chicken wing, they’ll rend flesh from bone leaving nothing left but the remnants of naked flats and drums. I can’t do that again. I can’t let myself hate myself again, because my sister doesn’t need my Demons on top of everything she’s going through right now.

So the table is set. The menu is written. And my Demons wait for me to slip. Wait for me to allow Doubt to creep in. Wait for Grief’s weight to be just that little bit too heavy for me to carry one day. Wait for Anger to get the best of me and lose it on some poor unsuspecting soul. Wait for Depression to wend its way around me like Karl/Karla envelops the Golden Gate Bridge. They salivate patiently, waiting for the feast to begin.

I’m fine. I’ll be fine. She will be fine. There is no other option.