Rolling the First Die

 This is my first attempt at blogging and I’m not entirely sure if should I be doing this - I don’t have the time or the passion to maintain this as often as I would like, but maybe that’s what I need. I am, honestly, just looking for somewhere I can vent without being judged and find a way to parse through the emotions, or even a way to keep a detailed log of what I want to accomplish and hold myself accountable to it. 

There are too many things that go through my mind that stay there and fester until I grow to hate myself or the people involved, or I don’t have a healthy outlet to express these feelings. I don’t have a safe space and I know the Internet shouldn’t be considered that but here we are. This blog is essentially just going to cover a multitude of things: my goals in life, any life updates, dungeons, and dragons shenanigans, my poetry, and other things. I just don’t wanna keep the important things bottled up. That said today’s topic is going to be heavy.

I need to start with some background… I have a hard time facing my emotions out right to the point where I delay them until the bottle breaks or I just run away from them.

In 2016, my mom, my sister, and I moved in with our grandmother during a particular nasty domestic dispute between my mom and her fiancé (let’s call him Terry). It wasn’t until they patched things up and he moved in with us too that things started to go downhill. My Mom became lethargic, was losing massive amounts of weight, in pain, and delirious. She refused to go see a doctor or go to the emergency room and when she did go, Everyone was under the  impression that it was too late. 

All my mother told us was that she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s T cell lymphoma. We weren’t told the stage of it or how severe it was – just that she was diagnosed and was going to undergo chemotherapy. I was talking to a friend of mine at this time and I was working at Dollar General before I gave my two weeks notice so I could become a truck driver. I didn’t tell anyone that this was the plan. I lied to everyone by saying I was moving further into town, I got a better job, etc.. 

I didn’t tell the truth about this until the day I was leaving. My father was disappointed in me and brokenhearted, and my mother didn’t really have an interaction with me about it. She slept more often than not so, yeah. I ran away from the problem and, this time, I ran far. Almost 32 hours away.

Three years later and it’s 2019. I come home and my mother is in remission. She and Terry patched things up and are set to get married in two months time. His sister, Tonya, is officiating the wedding and I got to write the ceremony speech. It’s currently hanging up in my mother’s house.

It wasn’t until around this time that I learned the truth of how bad everything was, and that it was my mother’s wish to not tell me while I was on the road. She didn’t want me to worry, but with the way my brain works – no news is bad news.

Let’s move forward to Sunday, August 10, 2025.

It’s a normal Sunday; we’re at my mom‘s and Terry’s playing board games like every time we come over. The only difference is that today we were going to celebrate our mother‘s birthday. My fiancé, my brother, Terry, and my mom are playing some Marvel game– Thanos rising: avengers, infinity war, I think it’s called. Shortly after my sister arrives, aunt Terry tells us the news.

He has renal cell carcinoma.

He will find out how bad it is whether it stayed localized or is metastatic, sometime this week. Now that it’s the next day, I don’t know how to deal with this emotion. I wrote a poem, but I don’t like it, but I guess that’s for you to decide. It’s called Two Storms, One Home.

A malignant blight upon our home,

It came with whispers sharp as knives,

A shadow creeping through the bones,

Threatening both your precious lives.

You faced it first with steel and fire,

Every scar a badge of war.

We clung to Hope, to each desire,

And watched you rise, unbowed, once more.

Yet scarcely had the dawn returned,

Before the night came back to stay.

It’s mark upon the one you earned,

To walk beside you all your days.

He is the steady in my storms,

The laughter I can’t bear to lose.

A father not by blood, but formed,

By every choice he made to choose.

He’s the one I turned to when fear

Made words too heavy for my own,

When I cannot face my father’s ear,

His was the safe place I had known.

Two storms between the same small walls,

Two hearts that will not break or bend,

We brace against what fate now calls,

And hold the line until the end.

I guess the only thing I want to impart from this, other than easing the pain in my chest, is to hold on to any relationship you have that is special. Their future is always uncertain and could, potentially, be shortened.