People tell me that God has a plan for me, but why would he put me through this? They also say that he will not give me more than what I can handle; personally, I don’t know if I can make it through this next month. Mom is bad off again, and we have no idea when dad is coming home.
Mom has cancer; I’ve been trying to help pay the bills since she can’t work, but it’s gettin’ to be impossible. I am beginning to run out of hope. With dad overseas in the military, it is really hard for me to take care of mom and Olivia, my eight year old sister. I am only seventeen! I am not ready to raise a child, and to provide care for my mother.
Making minimum wage at a tanning salon does not help very much. Well, in comparison to mom’s thirty three dollars an hour as a dental hygienist: I can’t cover much at all. What do I do when fall comes around? I was supposed to be starting Radford University. I can’t just leave mom and Olivia!
Mom always says, “Eliza, God will work it all out; he has a plan for you.” I’m just tired of all of this hell that I have been going through. Mom has to get better eventually, because I can’t live this life without her. They say that her treatments aren’t working anymore, but I personally think that’s crap. I don’t think that she ever was “getting better.” I think she just wanted us to believe that it was less painful than it really was.
She can’t leave me here with my brat of a sister and my stiff of a father. I love my family, but I need my entire family and that includes my mother. I told her she wasn’t allowed to give up: “You must see me get married and see Olivia graduate high school,” I told her. She use to just smile and tell again in different words that God will work it out.
“Well God needs to understand that Olivia needs her mother,” I would tell her. Again that same smile, and that same phrase. You know what? I began screaming at this innocent sickly face, “God isn’t doing anything for me! He doesn’t think I’m worth his time. He refuses to hear my prayers, stop my tears, and heal my mother,” at this remark mom just turned around and wheeled herself out of the room in her wheelchair.
Mom’s patience had just worn too thin, and in effort to keep herself from knocking the taste out of my mouth, she decided to leave the room. What she doesn’t understand is that I love her too much to let her stop trying and give it all to God. She was born a fighter; she has lost both of her breast to this cancer and I refuse to let her lose anything else, and that includes her life.
Poor Olivia has no idea what is going on. She knows that momma is sick, but does she know the severity of this disease? How do I even begin telling an eight year old that her mother may be dying? That is something that you should not hear until you are grown with your own family.