This is what you see.
You see someone who gets out of bed each day, showers, gets
dressed and heads out the door for work.
You see someone who assists customers
with a smile and helps to make other people’s day more complete. Someone who makes
their lives better.
You see someone who goes home at the end of the day, whether
from work, or errands, and sometimes watches TV, sometimes spends time with her
family. Sometimes while she watches TV she works on knitting scarves and hats
for people who utilize the local homeless shelter. Occasionally, you may even
see her out walking around town playing Pokeman Go. On Wednesdays, she tries to go to yoga.
You see someone who likes to spend time at the lake, out on
the boat. Sometimes you see her at the drive in for a double feature and a hot
dog smothered in nacho cheese.
At night, you see her crawl into bed and go to sleep.
This is what you see.
This is what you see, because it is what she lets you see.
This is what you don’t see.
What you don’t see when she crawls out of bed each morning
is the pain in her face. The pain that is from arthritis, spondylitis, and fibromyalgia.
The pain that makes her wonder if the doctors really got all of the cancer or
if it has been festering away in her body somewhere, growing, slowly killing
her without her knowledge, much less consent. The pain that eats away at her
daily as she deals with the depression that has slowly seeped in over the past
year and a half, and then the depression dump that came with the realization
she was an orphan twice over.
What you don’t see is that her showers have gotten longer.
Not because the hot water temporarily relieves the pain and inflammation in the
arm that is too afraid to work anymore, but because the water temporarily hides
the tears streaming down her face.
What you don’t see is the swelling and inflammation and the
glasses of water she has to quickly drink to flush her system thanks to kidney
damage from the antibiotics she was on for 9 months.
What you don’t see are the contortionist movements she has
to make in order to put her bra on, something that used to be so simple and
didn’t require a second thought. Something she wished she didn’t have to bother
with, but knows the difference in size and height of her breasts frightens
other people almost as much as it frightens her. Those moments when people see
the real truth of the destruction her body endured – she sees.
What you don’t see is that she puts on twice as much makeup
in the morning as she used to, because she has learned by the time she arrives
at work, more than half of it will have been cried off.
What you don’t see is when she goes to work and the friendly
coworker, the one who knows the ravages of cancer, the one who checked in on
her weekly during her medical leave, asks how she is doing, and for a moment,
she loses control and the tears flow again.
What you don’t see is the place she used to love to go to,
the place that made her feel safe, needed, appreciated, useful, has started to
lose its luster. A changeover of coworkers and circumstances have brought about
many changes, not all easy to deal with. At a time when she craves stability,
she finds turmoil where she used to find solace.
What you don’t see is when she gets into her car after work
and gets ready to drive home, the tears start flowing again, not because she
doesn’t want to go home, but because now it’s the only place she has to go. She
doesn’t have to drive to the next county to care for her aging mother anymore,
because there is no aging mother to care for anymore.
What you don’t see is the guilt, the guilt she has from
wanting that time for herself, to finding she has that time for herself.
What you don't see is the loneliness she feels when she can't call her mother just to say hi or to tell her some piece of news.
What you don't see is the knife that stabs her in the heart when she sees her mom's picture in her "favorites" in her contact list on her phone.
What you don’t see is that when she gets home, she doesn’t
want to be the one to make dinner, not because it’s still too hard on her
physically, but now because it’s too hard on her emotionally.
What you don’t see are the arguments she has with her best
friend through text messages, arguments because she needs him here and he needs
to not be there for other reasons.
What you don’t see is that when she knits while watching TV,
she does it to remind herself she has a roof over her head when many don’t.
It’s not just for those in need, it’s to remind herself she should be thankful
for what she has. Now when she knits, she also sees the pile of obituaries
sitting close by in the stack of things to take care. She knows her mother
would have wanted them sent out to family and
friends and yet each step she takes in placing her mother to rest feels
like another step farther away from her.
What you don’t see when she goes to yoga is that she is
forcing her body to work in ways it once was able to, but has somehow forgotten.
What you don’t see when she is walking around playing
Pokemon Go is that she is hiding from reality for a little while. Pidgies and
Rattatas have become a method of escape, not just ways to earn stardust and
points.
What you don’t see when she goes to bed at night is the
tears start in again, sometimes for hours on end, until she falls into a
restless sleep.
What you don't see is the dreams she has when she finally does fall asleep. The dreams that relive those final moments she had with her mom, the dreams where she wishes she could change things, the dreams where she second guesses herself constantly, the dreams where everything that could go wrong - does.
What you don't see, is she wakes up again every morning and goes through the same thing all over again.
This is what you don’t see.
This is what you don’t see, because, she doesn’t let you.
