Mojo and the Mess

I’ve realized something about my role in all of this: I am the buffer.

When the news comes, it comes for me first.

There’s no pause button, no filter, no time to prepare. A doctor says it out loud — a new growth, a change in the scans, numbers that point in the wrong direction — and it lands in my chest before I can even breathe. I don’t get the luxury of easing into it. I don’t get to say, “I can’t talk about this right now.”

The words hit me in real time, and in that same moment, I’m expected to process them, react to them, and start planning what comes next.

The Choice Everyone Else Gets

The part that stings is that everyone else gets a choice.

They can look away from the scans. They can say, “Not today.” They can step out of the room, turn off their phone, or take their sweet time “preparing themselves” before they engage with what’s happening to me. They can delay their heartbreak until it feels convenient.

But I can’t.

“Everyone else gets preparation. I get impact.”

By the time I share the news — by the time I say the words out loud to Pete, my family, or my friends — I’ve already been carrying it. I’ve already run through the shock, the grief, the private anger that comes out in clenched fists or silent tears in a sterile bathroom stall. I’ve already done the brutal part.

What they get is the softened version — because I’ve sanded down the edges to make it more bearable for them.

And that’s where the loneliness creeps in.

The Anger

Sometimes, it makes me furious.

Furious that I don’t get to choose when to absorb the blow. Furious that people can opt out of the hardest conversations while I’m stuck standing in the wreckage, rearranging the pieces in real time. Furious that people think I’m “handling it so well” when the truth is I just don’t have the option not to.

“I’m the one who has to be strong first. Always.”

Even when I don’t want to be. Even when I’m so tired I feel like my bones are made of glass. Even when all I want to do is scream that it’s unfair.

Because by the time the news spreads, I’m already expected to be the calm one, the explainer, the planner. I’m the translator between medical chaos and everyone else’s ability to cope.

Being the buffer doesn’t make me brave. It makes me exhausted.

The Ache

But beneath the anger, there’s this ache.

Nobody sees the moment the news first lands. Nobody feels the silence that follows when the doctor leaves the room and I’m just sitting there, trying to stitch myself back together before I walk out into the world. Nobody knows what it feels like to choke down grief so that when I finally tell the people I love, it doesn’t crush them the way it crushed me.

That moment belongs only to me.

And it’s a heavy one to hold alone.

Sometimes, I wish I could hand it off to someone else. Let them hear the words first. Let them be the one to sit with the raw, unfiltered truth while I stepped away, took a breath, and said, “I’m not ready either.”

But that’s never how it works.

The Truth

So I end up here: the buffer.

The first to hear, the first to break, the first to rebuild. The one who absorbs the unsoftened truth so that everyone else can take their time. The one who processes alone in the spaces between appointments and sleepless nights.

“It’s not strength. It’s survival.”

And some days, I’d give anything to look away, just for a little while.

💌 If you connected with this, if you’ve ever felt like the buffer in your own story, I’d love for you to stay with me in this space. Subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss the next post, and share it with someone who might need to feel less alone in the mess.