What Kizzie Did

I've been numb for weeks now.  Hearing that your mother has a terminal brain tumour and only has weeks to live is a shock, unsurprisingly.  You spend the first 24 hours or so screaming your tears, retching your guts out, passing out with the rawness of your heart.  Then you finally cry yourself to sleep.  You wake up, kick into high gear to make preparations for her to come home, so you don't have time to think anymore.
She comes home, and you are fine for a week or so.  Then you realise just how tired you all are, how hard it is to have to look after someone you love so deeply but who can't go the bathroom themselves and sometimes forgets who you are.  To see them in pain, to feel like they've become the child and you've become the parent.
You try to stay strong and calm because everyone else seems to not know what to do or is falling apart; you don't want to tell them that you don't know either and that you're falling apart in all sorts of little ways.  Your every instinct is telling you to just run away and hide and not come back.  You're angry and in pain and can understand why people turn to something - drugs, alcohol, religion - something, anything, strong enough to distract you from the pain.  From their pain.
Shit shit shit shit shit.