This is my first story for Odyssey, and I’m pretty nervous, to be quite honest. I finally get to write about what I want to write instead of writing about what I am told to write about.

Ever since my friend told me about this opportunity, I have been thinking a lot about what I wanted to write. I could write about how I hate this year’s election. I could write about how my favorite college football team, Iowa State, is having another rough year, but are starting to look a lot better. I really couldn’t choose what I was going to write about until I got a text from my mom.

I didn’t really want to have my first story be sappy, but once I got that text I knew what I was going to do. Well, here goes nothing.

You know how you always hear about parents not wanting to see their kids in pain? How it breaks their hearts to see that? I never fully understood what my parents meant by this until a couple of weeks ago. I now know what they meant and realized it can work in the opposite way.

It was the week before Labor Day weekend, and my family was going to travel five hours to spend the weekend with my older brother. They had been asking me for a while if I was going to go with them. My mom texted me one last time a couple of days before they were going to leave to see if I could make it. I told her I had to work and she was pretty bummed out.

We proceeded to keep texting for some time because I hadn’t been home in quite a while and we hadn’t talked for a while. She ended up telling me that she has been really depressed lately. All of her sons are grown up and moved away and my dad works a lot. She started to feel really lonely.

She went on to tell me she went to the doctor and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. This threw me for a loop. I don’t know much about this disease and to be honest I was pretty scared when she told me.

I still don’t really know how to process it or how I can help. I work most weekends and can’t get away to go see her. Texting my brothers, we all didn’t know what we were going to do. Hopefully we can get home soon and help change our lifestyles as a family and become healthier.

For some reason I feel like the parent now. It breaks my heart to hear my mom is sad, but I hope maybe if she reads this she will know how much she means to me.

I know I don’t say it a lot because I suck at talking about feelings, but I love you more than anything and you the real MVP.