Before six on a Sunday morning in December; I stand outside in the dark, a gentle drizzle cooling my still bed-warm face. Between a hideous cough and cold and a head full with a maelstrom of thoughts, sleep has proved to be, once again, elusive.
Only an hour before, warm and snuggled next to my darling husband, despite the lack of sleep, everything seemed possible in that fuzzy way of being not quite fully conscious to the world. But with each minute that passed, unbidden and an unwanted thoughts arrived – as they so often do.
In the pre-dawn, in my pyjamas and in the morning air I feel the softness of those moments when most of the world is still asleep. A gentle susurration shakes whispers in the tree tops. I say out loud to the dark, ‘I don’t want to leave. Please, let me stay.’
Last summer, I was at the point in the previous cancer recurrence, where I thought treatment was coming to an end. I had done five months of chemo, had surgery to remove all of the lymph nodes under my right arm and was nearing the end of radiotherapy. After what I thought was just another routine scan, I was told that the cancer had spread further than they had first thought and that I would have to do another six months of chemotherapy.
I did not deal with this well.
Since then, I have had regular on-off feelings that drop into the pit of my stomach at such random moments that they can completely knock me off guard, that I am going to die young. Standing outside on this December morning, that feeling lands again.
I head in. I feed the cats, because, let’s face it, there’s nothing like cats to bring you down to earth and tell you quite clearly where priorities lie.
I light candles around the living room, and think. It has become hard to know which thoughts are real, which are anxiety or fear driven, which ones are intrusive and completely untrue, which are hope, which are gut feeling – which ones to believe. And mostly, there isn’t really time to actually think about them when they happen. Life forces a relentless churn of hurried onwards motion.
By candlelight, and to the sound of cats chomping down their breakfast and the incredibly annoying ticking of two clocks and an orchestra of tinnitus, I try to unravel the knotted ball of thoughts and feelings. But it doesn’t work today.
I believe very much in both following with curiosity thoughts and feelings, examining them and giving time to try to get to know their origin and demands – as well as not giving over too much time to runaway thoughts that are often impishly playing games with you. Today it seems my brain has decided on the latter, and besides which, the hot water I’ve been drinking becomes pressing and is edging me to get up off the sofa – the spell is broken.
But, I have been left with this. I read recently that, as children, we cry when we are upset but, as adults, we cry more when things are beautiful. This is because, as we get older, we experience more of the difficulties of life, we know how deep hurt can feel and have known far more pain and grief. When something is beautiful we can truly feel how far it is from these sorrows and it touches us more for its distance from these things.
In a candle lit room, cats now gently snoring, my darling husband asleep upstairs, flames flickering shadows on the walls of the leaves of houseplants, silence, warmth – I cried. Big fat tears of love and joy, stratospheric in distance from the thoughts in the pit of my stomach. And while I still cry with heart breaking love – I know I am, for now, okay.
P.S. Oof, bit of a feels one there, wasn’t it. If it helps to lighten the mood, I am now writing this last bit while, for the second time this week, eating apple crumble for breakfast. I thoroughly recommend crumble by candlelight for breakfast – try it.
P.P.S. Re treatment, after much tormenting back and forth between options, I have decided to try for the genetic PARP inhibitor trials with Addenbrookes. This is both hopeful and terrifying. I have to pass some very intense medical screening first and while this is happening, I have to somehow come to peace with knowingly letting the cancer grow and potentially spread while doing so.
P.P.P.S. If anyone knows of any cough remedy that ACTUALLY works and will allow me to get some sleep for the first time in a week – let me know. No, Mum, I am NOT going to drink onion syrup.