I've always wanted to run away from any connection to my mother. Not just because of her craziness but because she died unexpectedly. With no prior history of any heart or health issues she had a massive heart attack in her sleep. Coronary edema is what the autopsy said and while I don't totally understand what it is I know I never want to have that happen to me. So I run. I run away from her, my childhood and the relationship problems I'm having now. Running helps me feel in control of my health. That said it is ironic that as healthy as I am, that I would be diagnosed with breast cancer and then heart problems. Still I run; maybe not as fast as I would like or as far but it's given me a sense of control and escape at the same time. It was surprising then to hear the therapist suggest today that my husband was maybe trying to run away from me.

I know that a cancer diagnosis is a big stressor for any relationship but could a fear of my mortality drive him away? When I was first diagnosed he assured me that he would help me get through the upcoming surgery and he joined me to the many doctor appointments, sitting in depressing waiting rooms and he helped with the tough decisions one makes when contemplating and choosing chemo. But once I started chemo things changed. He had offered to get live in help while I was going through treatment but I didn't like the idea of having a stranger living in the house all the time. I think because of that he decided that I could take care of things myself. I also didn't want him to think I was afraid of cancer so I saved my worrying and tears for the shower at the end of the day. Some nights I would silently cry myself to sleep while he slept besides me. Would I have been better off saying I was scared, tired and sick? I was jealous of women whose husbands took care of every need for their wives while they were going through chemo. It was tough to make everything seem like normal so when I had a day where I was exhausted I got no help and no sympathy. I remember distinctly one night. The kids were in a club and had to be picked up at 8:30. I was like the walking dead but my husband was tired from work so he wouldn't pick them up. But did I say anything or complain? No, I got in the car and feigned off sleep long enough to pick the kids up and get them home. What was wrong with me for not standing up for myself and what was wrong with him for not stepping up for me?

Then when it took longer to recover than it was supposed to he made me feel like I was weak, a hypochondriac. Doctors love to tell you that after two months your health is going to be back to normal but there is no "normal" after cancer, just a new world and a new normal. My new normal didn't fit in with doctor's stats. When the crushing fatigue lasted two months and then became six then eight months I was diagnosed with a heart problem. Sort of a perfect storm of genetic changes and chemo. If I wasn't trying to run so much I might not have known for a long time. I was forced to undergo numerous invasive tests because the doctors didn't want to believe my heart issue was from chemo. I felt bad for my husband always having to leave work to get the kids and then stay and wait for me and I never asked him how he felt. But, he never asked me how I felt. I felt like I was becoming a burden to him.

It has been a long road back to having a feeling of being healthy and in that time I have had more procedures and have lost two friends with very similar diagnoses as mine. I remember telling my husband about the first friend recurring and then later dying and I didn't get much of a reaction and certainly no attempt to reassure me that everything would be okay. Then the second friend recurred and died a year later. Again, no comment from him. I don't even think he acknowledged I was talking.

So could it be that he was blocking out everything I was saying because he was afraid of his own mortality? He's lost a good bit of weight over the last six months and has been running and hitting the gym almost every day. In fact he won't even let me run with him anymore because I'm too slow for him. Do I remind him of his own mortality? Would he rather be with someone who hasn't had any health problems? Would it be too painful for him to lose me? Believe me when I say, "I'm not going anywhere."

As I begin to run slower away from my mother's failings, letting her past hurt catch up to me, he is starting to run faster from mine.

So what do you say when someone looks at you and says, "Wow, you've been through a lot." and you know that they only know half the story?

I saw a therapist yesterday for the first time. Well, not really. I tried a few times to see one but the topic of my past either was to difficult to articulate or wound up consuming most of the session the first time we went through counseling twenty years ago. At least I had written out what I needed to say so I could just hand her the paper and she could get an idea of what had happened. The sad thing is I had originally written this out a few months back for my husband and when the therapist asked me what my husband's reaction was after he read it and I had to say that he didn't say anything to me. So what does that mean? Does he think I'm some kind of a freak or psycho because of what I experienced during my childhood? It probably wasn't fair to him that I never told him any of these things prior, but in my mind I didn't want my past to have any influence on my relationship. It was a mistake on my part to think this and if I could hit the pause and rewind button I would but it's too late.

I've always had this sense that my father didn't know what to do with me after my mother died. He had very little to do with my childhood except for the occasional trip to the amusement park or racetrack but apart from that I remember little. As much as he and my mother didn't get along he kept their bedroom exactly the same as if she were alive. Weird I know, but I never asked him about it because you just didn't talk about anything back then. My sister came home to live with us for awhile and then we had a housekeeper that came when I got home from school. Some things I just don't remember and maybe it's my mind just trying to forget them. I just remember the feeling that I was different from my classmates and that they all knew that my mother had died. Divorce wasn't a popular thing back in the seventies so to be living in a single parent household was not common. I felt like I was just going through the motions and tried to avoid any situation where I would have to say that my mother died. I couldn't even mention it without completely falling apart. The problem with that was you didn't show any emotion in my house now that my father was in charge, especially crying, and that's all I wanted to do. As much as my mother subjected me to her verbal abuse I was completely stunned when she died, like the rug was pulled out from under me.

So I went through the motions, I hated school and all I could think about was going to the barn so I could ride and escape life. Thank God I found horses because otherwise my life would have been a disaster. I wanted attention and if getting in trouble got me attention then so be it. The only thing that kept me from following that path was if I screwed up I wasn't getting to go to the barn and that was the worst punishment I could imagine.

Funny how the one thing that really got me through my childhood and adolescence was the one thing my husband couldn't stand. He knew I rode and was serious about riding when I met him but maybe he thought I shouldn't need the horses since I had him.

I never realized how much our past affects our present and how those past behaviors manifest themselves in our relationships with our own children.

Today

It's raining. Great... I'm seeing a therapist today for the first time. Actually I've seen a few over the years but never made it past the second or third appointment because it was too hard for me to go through the re-telling of my childhood. The last two therapists were for my son who has Aspergers. The therapist would ask the inevitable question of how was my childhood and I would say, "Great!" Why bother spending time that should be spent helping my son discussing my childhood. I'm supposed to see a second therapist that my husband has chosen for us to see together but there is no appointment yet. I don't understand how someone can be a therapist, helping people, and not return a new patient's phone call asking for an appointment? I'd be finding a different therapist but I told my husband he would be the one to find the marriage counselor since he was the one leaving the marriage.

It was raining the morning my mother died. After saying over and over how she wanted to die in her sleep she got what she wished for, a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. The memory is crystal clear. My mother gasping for air and my father reaching over trying to wake her. A call to 911 with instructions given on how to perform CPR. My father trying his best to do something he'd never done before on a wife who pretty much hated him. I wonder how that felt? I guess those feelings melt away when it's a life or death situation. My father tried to do the right thing. EMS came and they put her on the floor, continuing to do CPR and shock her back to life. For a long time I wouldn't step on the spot where my mother lied on the floor that morning. It was a quick drive to the hospital in the pre-dawn hours but it seemed to take a lifetime. My father asked the desk nurse when we arrived to the ER how my mother was doing. She looked at my father, then at me and said "She's not breathing." It wasn't long after that that we got the news. We walked out of the hospital, my father's arm around my shoulder. It was a long silent car ride home.

I was twelve and just at the cusp of the teen years when all you want is to be just like everyone else.