Mother Earth is in intensive care right now at the hospital.

I don’t know what else to write.

I’m exhausted. My eyes hurt from being tired and from crying.

I wasn’t able to hold it together the whole day. I tried.

I had messaged Mother Earth last night for the dates of the wedding. I wanted to request my time off even though it’s more of a diplomatic thing. I wouldn’t show up to work even if my request were denied.

She had responded a while later saying that she would get me the dates as soon as she got back home. At the moment she was at the hospital.

I texted back, “Hospital?”

A little while later I got a reply. It was Josh. He was using Mother Earth’s phone. She had said she had chest pains, and they were getting worse, so they were at the hospital. They would keep me posted.

I wasn’t very worried at the time, though looking back at it I suppose ‘chest pain’ should have been a huge, “WFT, not good,” flag.

It wasn’t until later this afternoon that I noticed a post on Facebook from Josh saying that Mother Earth was in an ICU and that she could use our thoughts and prayers.

After reading the post I was in instant shut down mode. I focused on everything, literally everything else expect that fact. It wasn’t real. It was just information floating around in my mind that I was going to avoid.

And for a while I was successful.

I got the rest of my podcast recorded. I brushed Scarlet. I did some pointless, irrelevant chores that I can’t remember. I went to the gym and practiced for my kyu 6 test and taekwondo. I talked to my mom about how we were going to get my furniture to Orlando.

All the while this box that I had shoved all of my emotions into was rattling. Building.

After the gym I was went to the craft store to get the thread that I needed, and that’s when it started becoming too much.

I focused on breathing. I focused on the road. I focused on everything that wasn’t inside of my head, and even with that silent tears kept running down my face, and I couldn’t stop them.

Somehow I got in and out of the store. Some how I made it home. But once I was inside, alone, I lost it. I cried. I felt helpless. I felt weak. I felt scared and vulnerable. I felt useless. I felt so horribly alone.

After a little while I opened my laptop. I wanted to message Josh.

Instead I saw that I had a message from Tre. I replied to it since I haven’t talked to him since Friday. It came up that he was at school, and I asked if it would be ok if I came by to see him.

“What type of question is that? COME HERE NOW!!!!” What his response. It made me smile.

I said, “Just to give you fair warning, I might come unglued a little bit.”

When I got to school there were a handful of people around. We watched Tre’s reel, which came out amazing. But eventually he asked what was going on in ‘Jen land’. So I told him.

I said it out loud.

Mother Earth is in intensive care right now.

More tears, but not hysterics. I gave myself points for not losing my shit in front of everyone.

He let me talk through all of the facts I know, which isn’t much. He listened. He kept me grounded while this void opened up under my feet.

We stepped out of the lab for more space, more air. It helped. Moving, being up helped. It made things feel more real. We talked about facts. I said I knew she was at the best place possible, where she will be able to get the help and care she needs.

I said I knew if I was on the outside of it I would have a battle plan and I would be taking action and I would be making sure everyone was taken care of, but that right now my brain can’t process this information.

When faced with the thought of Mother Earth not being here I can’t think any more. I don’t know how to handle that information. I have no place for it in my head. No spot for it to go. This information is wrong, it can’t exist. It doesn’t function in my world.

Mother Earth has to be here. I have to be her maid of honor. I have to cook zucchini fries for her. We have to have pillow talks and laugh about how boys are stupid.

My world can’t function, can’t exist, if she isn’t in it.

That’s what is going through my mind right now. And I know that makes me sound weak. I know that makes me sound dependent. I know that it’s stupid and childish.

Of course I can function with out her. People lose loved ones everyday, and they continue to live. They wake up and keep living their lives. It can be done, so who am I to say I can’t.

But that’s what it feels like. It feels like everything will stop. That time will freeze. That I will never move past that point in time if it happens. There will be no more after that event. It will be as if the TV were turned off in the middle of an episode, and the audience will be left wondering what the true end was.

We’ll never know.

That’s what it feels like. I can’t see life without her in it. In my world she has to be there, and when faced with the reality that she may not, I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know what to do right now. I can’t fly out to Texas. I can’t be there to hold her hand. I can’t make a deal with her, that if she’s strong for me I’ll be strong for her. I can’t hold Josh and share the burden with him.

I can’t do anything but sit in front of a computer. One that part of me wants to throw against the wall and shatter into pieces because that’s what it feels like is happening to me right now. I want to be destructive. I want to rage at life. I want this to not be happening.

I want to be a weak, scared child, and have my Mother Earth pet my hair and tell me that everything will be ok. And I want to be able to believe that everything will be ok. And maybe if I were on the outside of the situation, away from all of these emotions I would see that everything will in fact be ok.

But I’m not there. I’m in the middle of it and all I can see is darkness, and all I can feel is fear and desperation. I want to do something. Anything. One thing, any thing, that will make all of this ok. Right all of this wrong. And there is nothing I can do. Literally, nothing, except wait.

I feel like the monsters are real. I feel like they’re going to win.

How am I supposed to be an Earth Dragon without my Mother Earth?