In my work, I teach clients how to let go, how to be ‘in the moment’, how to allow themselves to cry. Tears are healing I will say. Just let them come and you will feel better, I will say. Well, do you know what. I lied. You don’t feel better, I don’t feel better and I have cried buckets of tears these past weeks. Do I feel better? Does letting go make you feel better? No it doesn’t and I apologise to everyone I have told that they do.
I thought that once we had made the choice, as to what treatment David will undergo, we, or rather I as I can only speak for myself, would feel better. I don’t. We don’t as yet know whether the surgeon will operate as my hubsnad is over 70. This in itself causes us obvious worry. It is all in the hands of the ‘team’ who will meet and decide whether to see us for an assessment. Horrible that others may know before we do, how our future will pan out. Helplessness is evident now.
I am currently not sleeping well. I wasn’t sleeping at all but have a kind of ‘bracelet’ that induces sleep and it works. So I get a few hours each night, enough to help me through the fog that is my today. As I awake, everything is okay. Normal. I look around my beautiful purply/Lavender bedroom and am okay. Then it comes, like a sledge-hammer hitting me in the very pit of my stomach. I remember. All is not okay.
I try to retreat back under the duvet but my wonderful husband is already coming up the stairs with my breakfast. Yes, David, with all that he is going through, believes in the ‘norm’. The norm in our house and has been for 30 years, is his bringing breakfast up to our room and we sit in bed and chat. With our curtains drawn back, we look out over beautiful countryside, hills and valleys and had always wondered at this amazing scenery.
But not any more. I don’t see the beauty anymore.
Anytime it can strike, anytime during my day when I have worked on ‘normal’ ,suddenly the rush of emotions from deep inside of me cause a huge rolling sea of apprehension and fear. A legacy from my childhood returns in all it’s glory. Panic. The feeling of something huge and horrible coming. I try to find the stop cock for these empty emotions, to try and turn it and twist it firmly shut. I have always been able to do this in the past, switch it off and carry on as though nothing happened, nothing is wrong. But not now. I can’t seem to reach it fast enough and suddenly salty unstoppable emotions stream down my face .
As I said before, in an earlier blog, life these past years has been fraught. Lots of losses, some forced upon us by death, my eldest sister and a close friend. My youngest daughter’s unborn baby. Some others because I have always needed to be honest. This need to keep my integrity cost me my eldest daughter Lisa. Yes I could have lied on a legal statement and said everything written about us was true but I couldn’t. I had tried to prevent a little foster girl being treated as I had been treated, by the woman they called ‘my mother’. I had tried talking to my daughter about how she was with this child. and she shut me out of her life but still expected me to lie for her. I couldn’t do this, it was far too much to ask as the lies were too huge. So life became full circle you could say. Trying to stop this cost me my daughter and my grandchildren. At that time I was helping her adopt a foster baby, my granddaughter Hannah, who was 4 years old this past week and that in itself brought the tears. This falling out,was followed by horrendous treatment from my youngest sister who had, sadly, barged into our lives after 40 years of no contact and taken over the family that was mine telling wicked lies to keep them onside. They should all be part of this. Supporting us in our hour of need. That’s what families do isn’t it. Not my family.
So I was already in a bad way when this new nasty hit us all. Yes I know that it is David who has this disease but I have been shocked and angry at how it has affected me. I should be the strong one as I always have been. I should be comforting and encouraging him, not the other way around. I had read that wives and partners are affected as well as the patient but was never prepared as to what extent. This disease changes people. It has changed us, changed me, changed the dynamics, the conversation, the way we are. It has stolen our ‘norm’ and replaced it with ‘canceritis’.
Looking out of my study window as I write, I can see the Welsh hills and valleys. It all looks the same but the beauty has gone. The leaves are beginning to fall, a time of year I usually love. Things obscured by the leaf laden trees have become visible again. Today I can see the top of a little cottage that is obscured all Summer, stolen from my sight. It looks the same and as it always has in Autumn. Like nothings changed.
But everything has changed. Yes, the seasons always do, but here ‘on the farm’, life is now different than ever before.
So how do I survive to help my husband? How do I get the ‘normal’ back? I don’t know. But what I do know is that the Carol Ann who is the Health Professional. The Carol Ann who everyone comes to in a crisis. The Carol Ann who is the survivor, needs to buck her ideas up and come back from wherever it is she thinks she is hiding. Because I need her, here, now!
Last week I said I would find humour. Still looking.
I said I would be strong. Still trying.
I said I wanted ‘it’ to stop, to turn the clock back. To un-know what we now know. Didn’t happen. So I need to look forward. Plan Christmas. Plan where we will move to after David is well. Yes we have decided to move, maybe back home, who knows but move we will. Life here has been spoilt. Spoilt by ‘family’, spoilt by illness, spoilt by loss,so a new venture is on the cards. If I can plan ahead, then all will be well. As a child, an emotion I had, never served me well. I ‘hoped’ that my life would change. That the abuse would stop. I ‘hoped’ that one day my ‘mother’ would show me love. None of that happened. So I believe I am now due some good. That ‘hope’ will prove justified.It’s time it began to do that. So Hope. If you are listening, I am now hoping life will get better. Please don’t let me down.
Thankyou for reading. x
carolannwright 
Reblogged this on carolannwright and commented:
For Peter who missed it.I must be posting it in the wrong place. Sorry. x
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