This is gonna be a rambling post, as I'm not having a good day.

It's late at night here and I was just looking up a movie review by Roger Ebert and ended up on the Wiki page and later a news page. It made me so anxious I decided to share it with you guys.

He looks scary now! He has lost weight and all the surgeries for his thyroid cancer have really messed him up bad.

I quote: "During his various surgeries, doctors carved bone, tissue and skin from his back, arm, and legs, and transplanted them in an attempt to reconstruct his jaw and throat, though these transplants would each be unsuccessful, and eventually removed. As a result of these procedures, his right shoulder is visibly smaller than his left, and his legs have been scarred and weakened."

Some years ago he lost the ability to speak and also can not eat or drink (he has a feeding tube). He has declined more surgery even if his cancer advances. Regarding his death, he says " I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path."

Reading that, I found myself feeling very helpless and scared in face of life's unpredictability and cruelties. I started reading about signs of thyroid cancer online, and then started to wonder what if my aging parents get that. We all die of something. I can control some things but not the rest. What if my own death is an extremely painful never-ending series of surgeries, rehabs, loneliness, and humiliation?

As I've said before I have a degree in psych, and I analyze my own fears when I have the presence of mind, so I suddenly realized that I am living what I fear the most, but in a much milder version though it also feels endless. I'll explain.

It's so strange how things like this happen. Today I was dealing with my mom who has borderline traits and I was feeling depleted enough as I get next to no support from the rest of my family. Sure they'll help me with a lot of things and I'm very thankful to them but in terms of emotional support it used to be my mom till I realized what state she was in so I have little emotional support now.

Hence, reading this thing about Ebert suddenly brought out all my fears, fear about unpredictability of life, about never-ending pain, death, afterlife, etc. What if I were in that situation? Hell, I won't even undergo chemo. I'll ask the doctors to pull the plug right away. I'm in my 30s and have already faced enough pain and I see no reason to prolong something like that if I'm in Ebert's shoes, in my 60s or 70s. My younger sister has schizophrenia and my dad is emotionally distant. Slowly, we have isolated ourselves from everybody and from each other...mental illness in the family does that sometimes. The shame, the anger, the fear...you don't want others around and others don't want to be around you.

Sometimes I feel like I have to be there for everybody and nobody is there for me. Of course perhaps that's how others in my family feel too but I'm the one who likes to share feelings and talk it out. I can't do that with my mom anymore and my dad, well, he was never interested.

Yeah I see a therapist once every two weeks but that's not enough. My family is so enmeshed, I used to obtain all I needed from them, also a reason to live. Now I have to find that elsewhere. Between the unpredictability of my mom and my sister going in and out of hospital, I think to myself there better be a Heaven after this life because this life sucks big time. Thank God I'm healthy. I am sensitive and have an anxious personality but other than that and a couple of minor physical ailments, I'm basically healthy. But imagine my mom getting cancer, and that's just gonna make her psychological issues worse. Or my sister, who already has some health problems because of the *******ed anti-psychotics. Or myself, if I get hospitalized? All these anxieties must be messing up my body little by little. Who's gonna visit me? Who's gonna care about me? And ultimately, what would my life mean? Would I and everybody I care about disappear? For some a life of joy and some pain, and for some a life of pain and bits of joy...and then nothingness?

Ebert does not seem to have problem with that: "I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. "

But I can't look at it like that. I'll let the doctors know. Drug me up good and let me die into the night. This ****** life aint' worth it.

Thank you for listening...I may regret posting this tomorrow, thinking that as a psych grad I should know better and be in control of my emotions, but I have to learn to share, to give love, and to receive it.