I’ve always thought that all knowledge is opened to us upon death, a small part of that being that you will at once know everything anyone has ever said or thought about you, good and bad. But the bad won’t hurt you as it would have when you where alive, the bad thoughts, words and deeds will belong to those who have done them; they must ponder on why they did them not you.
Some days I wake up extremely early, either my lone kidney needs it’s 100th wee of the night or I am startled awake by something that has taxed me for the last few months. If the latter awakes me then I know I cannot turn over, snuggle deeper and go back to sleep, in fact I know I may as well get up there and then be it 4am or not.
I struggle with the thought that I have a character flaw so… gods I can’t find a word for what it must be, what do you call a character flaw that repels a large number of people from you? What is it about me that would do that, because I can’t believe a group of people would each have the same character flaw that would cause them to behave in such a way, therefore the problem is with me? What did I do over the years of friendship to that would cause friends to act in this way?
It is the top of my stomach just under the breastbone that feels it, a strange achy emotion that is trapped there swirling around. The heat from it rushes to my cheeks and burns them whenever anyone asks me about them; if I think about them for too long the pain from it appears behind my eyes and makes them begin to fill. I change the subject as quickly as I can for I have no answers, how can I when I don’t know the reason.
I know that when I die I will have to look at and answer for every single one of the bad thoughts, words and deeds that I have done; I know I will have to face them, accept what I did and apologise, I am more than willing to do that. In life this has made me realise that there is no need to add more to what I will have to consider in death; why be mean or angry, why bitch or backbite, why lie or evade when in death everything will be know; you cannot avoid anything.
In death I will know what my great character flaw is and so in life I must work on patience and trying to be at peace with the knowledge that there is something in me that eventually repels. This is not easy; part of me wonders how I could ever become friends with anyone again if this is what will ultimately happen. After much thought I have decided that by far the best way to stop this ever occurring again is to not have any friends; by that I mean I will endeavour not to make any new ones, not that I will push away those who have stood by me over the last few months.
At the moment I cannot mentally cope with what has happened and so I could not cope with losing another group of people from my life if I where to form a friendship again. It is too painful, far too painful. Even now I cannot quite comprehend that there is something so fundamentally wrong with me that I do not merit a kind word, thought or deed from those I thought of as my friends at a time when I needed them the most. But the sheer fact that I didn’t warrant any such thing proves that there so obviously is something wrong with me, I have to face and deal with that but it is just so very hard.
Still, if I am trying to find positives in life I must find a positive from this. Is the positive the realisation that I am flawed? We are all flawed to some extent and don’t we know this already? Maybe we’re not all flawed to the degree that a large amount of people reject us, so I don’t believe that the awareness of being flawed is the positive I take from this. Is it the understanding that I cannot bare the thought of making new friends only for this to happen again a few years down the line? Hmmm that is one to which I need to give more thought. I am fully aware that I am enough for myself perhaps this is the expansion of that, or another part? More contemplation, more dreams, more sleepless nights and turmoil until I have hopefully learned something from this awful experience.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Waterloo Sunset
I’ve been away from this blog thing for a long time and what was here I’ve just deleted; I felt it was what I wanted to do. All that’s gone now, there’s no point to it, to who I was then or anything that happened.
I have had cancer, which looks like nothing when written down but in 3D, real, non internet life was quite something. Actually I had cancer x 2. In fact I am one of a very tiny percentage of people each year who have 2 unrelated cancers at the same time. Mine were uterine and kidney for which I had quite a long and major operation to perform a hysterectomy and nephrectomy at the same time, which was quite fascintaing to watch according to my gynaecologist.
It is a long tale from then to now and I’m not going to tell it all. It’s as though words are just not effective enough to describe how I felt, to describe what the cancers were doing to me in the month before they were removed. After the op I came round in intensive care and, although I was very out of it and having breathing problems, I felt that the cancers were gone. It’s a feeling I couldn’t even begin to try to sort out into words, before the op I could feel and knew I was dying, after the op that was gone. That doesn’t seem enough but that’s the only way I can put it, I felt I wasn’t dying anymore.
My recovery has been just that… a recovery, scars knitted, skin and nerves rejoined, mountainous pain slowly ebbed away, the body repaired and left with nothing to show for it’s efforts but one very straight and well hidden lower abdomen scar, a healed upper hip kidney exit site and small keyhole entrance areas that my kidney man described as looking like machine gun fire on one side of my torso. Nothing ghastly, unsightly or disfiguring in any way. I am still suffering twinges and some pain as everything inside rearranges itself and fills in the empty spaces, I’m a little tired from a full day after only being able to manage 4 hours a day awake pre-op, but I’m getting there.
And now I have told of my physical healing I reveal my mental healing and how cancer changed my life! Or I don’t because it didn’t. My life bumbles along the same as it always has; I am not about to climb K2 whilst carrying a yak, discover God and become a nun, start my own business selling toe warmers, abscond to the Scilly Isle to raise bees, or turn into a vehement anti-smoker and campaign to have all smokers fired into the sun. I have had my hair cut, lost some weight and stopped smoking, that’s about it, none of them were a great effort on my part.
There have been small changes but no great blinding light. I see some things differently, there’s a lot of ‘what’s the point’ but good what’s the points, what’s the point in becoming mad/angry/upset/sad at certain things, I can’t control them, they happen no matter what I do, it’s easier to shrug/smile/take a breath/sort it out as best I can.
I realise that it only takes small things to create happiness, and that you should try to create these small things as often as possible. I realise that it is easier to be kind than to cause upset. I realise my world and what I affect is smaller than I thought and I am satisfied with that. I realise that I am enough. I am enough for myself.
I have not participated in the internet since I became ill, little in the few months before my diagnosis and after hardly at all, mainly due to the physical problems my cancer caused. But also my life was filled with hospital visits, tests, scans, x-rays, sharp pointy needles, doctors, nurses and waiting for results that seemed to be heading towards an inevitability I could see as clearly as I see these words now.
There are things I have missed a great deal from this lack of internet participation but I’m not so sure I will be leaping back into the wide world of webness. I am trying to sort out the feelings this has caused me, distrust… shame… a little anger… a great amount of distress. All of these together are overwhelming to me; and I am still amazed by how even the smallest amount of stress and upset just exhausts me for hours at a time.
I still have not resolved exactly how to handle a huge chunk of my life disappearing, apart from feeling lucky to have a life for something to go missing from. I am trying very hard to turn it into a ‘what’s the point’ shrug/smile/take a breath/sort it out as best I can moment, but so far it isn’t happening.
My mother was diagnosed with cancer only days after I had the operation to remove mine. She has had her own op and is now going through chemotherapy, I’m not going to talk about that, it’s too here and now. Today is her birthday.
The world has shrunk to my own back yard and that is enough for now.
I have had cancer, which looks like nothing when written down but in 3D, real, non internet life was quite something. Actually I had cancer x 2. In fact I am one of a very tiny percentage of people each year who have 2 unrelated cancers at the same time. Mine were uterine and kidney for which I had quite a long and major operation to perform a hysterectomy and nephrectomy at the same time, which was quite fascintaing to watch according to my gynaecologist.
It is a long tale from then to now and I’m not going to tell it all. It’s as though words are just not effective enough to describe how I felt, to describe what the cancers were doing to me in the month before they were removed. After the op I came round in intensive care and, although I was very out of it and having breathing problems, I felt that the cancers were gone. It’s a feeling I couldn’t even begin to try to sort out into words, before the op I could feel and knew I was dying, after the op that was gone. That doesn’t seem enough but that’s the only way I can put it, I felt I wasn’t dying anymore.
My recovery has been just that… a recovery, scars knitted, skin and nerves rejoined, mountainous pain slowly ebbed away, the body repaired and left with nothing to show for it’s efforts but one very straight and well hidden lower abdomen scar, a healed upper hip kidney exit site and small keyhole entrance areas that my kidney man described as looking like machine gun fire on one side of my torso. Nothing ghastly, unsightly or disfiguring in any way. I am still suffering twinges and some pain as everything inside rearranges itself and fills in the empty spaces, I’m a little tired from a full day after only being able to manage 4 hours a day awake pre-op, but I’m getting there.
And now I have told of my physical healing I reveal my mental healing and how cancer changed my life! Or I don’t because it didn’t. My life bumbles along the same as it always has; I am not about to climb K2 whilst carrying a yak, discover God and become a nun, start my own business selling toe warmers, abscond to the Scilly Isle to raise bees, or turn into a vehement anti-smoker and campaign to have all smokers fired into the sun. I have had my hair cut, lost some weight and stopped smoking, that’s about it, none of them were a great effort on my part.
There have been small changes but no great blinding light. I see some things differently, there’s a lot of ‘what’s the point’ but good what’s the points, what’s the point in becoming mad/angry/upset/sad at certain things, I can’t control them, they happen no matter what I do, it’s easier to shrug/smile/take a breath/sort it out as best I can.
I realise that it only takes small things to create happiness, and that you should try to create these small things as often as possible. I realise that it is easier to be kind than to cause upset. I realise my world and what I affect is smaller than I thought and I am satisfied with that. I realise that I am enough. I am enough for myself.
I have not participated in the internet since I became ill, little in the few months before my diagnosis and after hardly at all, mainly due to the physical problems my cancer caused. But also my life was filled with hospital visits, tests, scans, x-rays, sharp pointy needles, doctors, nurses and waiting for results that seemed to be heading towards an inevitability I could see as clearly as I see these words now.
There are things I have missed a great deal from this lack of internet participation but I’m not so sure I will be leaping back into the wide world of webness. I am trying to sort out the feelings this has caused me, distrust… shame… a little anger… a great amount of distress. All of these together are overwhelming to me; and I am still amazed by how even the smallest amount of stress and upset just exhausts me for hours at a time.
I still have not resolved exactly how to handle a huge chunk of my life disappearing, apart from feeling lucky to have a life for something to go missing from. I am trying very hard to turn it into a ‘what’s the point’ shrug/smile/take a breath/sort it out as best I can moment, but so far it isn’t happening.
My mother was diagnosed with cancer only days after I had the operation to remove mine. She has had her own op and is now going through chemotherapy, I’m not going to talk about that, it’s too here and now. Today is her birthday.
The world has shrunk to my own back yard and that is enough for now.
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