Last week saw me lost. A ‘what now’ kinda blog. Some readers identified with how I felt and made comment or messaged me. Thankyou for your support. But some positives came out of it,building on a lifting of some of the nasties from the past. Or at least I thought they had. As you read, I was looking back over the past few years and feeling a bit redundant, I had lost my role at home and as a person. It has made me recognize that although at times I felt it was all getting the better of me, pushing me to the edge of insanity….it failed. During my life I have had some wonderful things happen to me but like everyone, also some horrid things. Obviously PC being one of the latter. I survived a childhood without love, constant CSA and legacies of these, sent me into depression and left me anxious most of the time. I lost 2 sons, one born sleeping and one to adoption against my will, poor health and broken relationships. But I am still here. Most of the time, grateful and trying to be a good person, helping others , loving my family and caring for rescued ponies alongside my own. Throughout what life has thrown at me, like many, I have been strong enough to bounce back. I think as a child, I survived because I had no choice. After having my first daughter Lisa, my blessing, I had a great reason to keep going and life was good. I loved those years of me and her. I wanted to be the mum to her that I never had. As time went on our family grew and Marie was born, another reason to keep going. The loss of my sons was almost unbearable and without my daughters… who knows. And then after many broken relationships, and a vow never to be serious in one again, I met David. For the next 25 plus years I was very happy, we were very happy. Lisa had moved away years before but we had a good relationship, strong enough at first to withstand the distance. We visited each other a few times a year, not enough but we had been forced to move with my husband’s work. Something none of us wanted. The years following, from the nasty hoax until mid 2013, were good. We were to have a new member of the family a baby, Hannah, adopted by my daughter Lisa,who was to become my granddaughter. The excitement was unreal. We Skyped and Lisa rang many times each day, keeping me up to date with how it was all going. I did all her paperwork and her written history as she wasn’t sure of facts etc. I had documented on here what happened next and won’t repeat it but after she shut me out, life changed. I missed her so much, cried so much, so many nights David held me while I cried myself to sleep. It was all so unreal. Every morning as I woke, at first thinking it was a dream, then reality hit me as it does in the early days after someone you love dies. This was even worse than that. I was grieving the living. Then, just to add to all the nasties coming our way, PC came calling! I had already started blogging, my only way of family and friends who I didn’t see, knowing how things were,. The truth against lies being smeared around. Then, after PC hit us, that became to The focus for my blog. I needed to do this so much, I still do, my therapy if you like as I live quite an isolated kind of life.
It is hard for every PC sufferer and carer, as I have written before. It can make you angry, scared and sad. It touches our every minute, every day, changing us into someone we don’t recognize, leaving us feeling alone,hence last weeks blog. It takes up your every breath and if you are already over burdened, it can take you over the edge. I was often almost there. I know from comments and messages from other partners and wives,that many feel the same. So because of this, and to try to find who I really am again, I intend to write my blogs as a diary and have it published if I can, giving a portion of the proceeds or maybe all of them, to PC Awareness UK.I think it important, that along with facts about this horrid illness, we need to acknowledge how it can affect the wives/partners and caregivers of men suffering PC and not the man only. There are books written by sufferers, but few from the perspective of a wife and none so candid and open.If I had read a book detailing the nasty affects P C has on people in my position and how it can make me feel, if I had read another woman feeling as I have felt, I would not have felt so alone on this journey. ‘PC and The Forgotten Victim’ is on the way. A positive for me to embark on or revisit.Part of finding my way, finding my place if you like, my role. PC has almost beat me at times and last week I was lost but I need to show it that I won’t be beaten,that I am still the strong woman I was a few years ago, before my estrangement and before PC. I am headed back! Slapping cancer in the face on the way!
One of the positives, I think, about my PC journey, is the realisation of our mortality. The sudden wake up call that told us we could so easily run out of time. The losses suffered over the past few years, brought this to the for-front of my thinking,we have both suffered the loss of siblings, a brother and a sister from both of our families.So death has touched us and although David is pragmatic, I will always think of the ‘what ifs’. What if I died and had not ended the estrangement of my daughter Lisa and my grandchildren. What if the truth never comes out and they remember me as the person their aunt,has painted me? She and the boys might never know, that even though she has hurt me beyond hurt and lost me so much, I still love her. I don’t like what she has done to me and my family here I am not sure I could forgive but I could ‘accept’ all of it if she could just tell me why. Why and how she could have treated me, her Mum, the way she has. One of my favourite sayings is this: ‘He who has a why to live can bear any how’. So if I knew why, I could accept her how. After last week, I thought that now the time was right to make sense of everything. She had been on my mind more than usual for few days, I knew I needed to make this right. Make sense of the nonsense.
With all that in mind, I knew I had to hand out an Olive branch,had to try to make right a relationship that had gone so wrong. As I said, I have documented over the years of how my daughter and sister have hurt me and even after David being diagnosed with cancer, it didn’t stop. At this point I must admit to reacting at this time and not responding. I was at rock bottom and I met pain and hurt with anger, sometimes quite vitriolic, and for that I am both sorry and ashamed. But reading and hearing stories that were so horrible relayed and sent to me by relatives and friends, I didn’t cope very well. I was hurting beyond hurt and although that is no excuse, it should validate what I did. I verbally fought back, over social media and in the early days, by email. Not every time but it shouldn’t have happened ANY time. I wish now I had gone down to see my daughter, faced her and I am sure she would not have been how she was indirectly. I am hoping and need to believe, that face to face with her Mum, the woman who brought her up with love and honesty, we would have sorted things out. But that was not possible for many reasons.
Since writing last weeks blog, I made a decision to somehow make things right. Yes I felt lost and estranged but I was seemingly the only person who could remedy this. So I wrote her a letter. Now that the perpetrator, of a lot of the nasties, my sister, had left the scene, I thought I stood a chance of reaching the girl I knew Lisa to be, or rather was, before all of this. So I wrote to her. Some on here and friends who know what has happened over the past few years, might not understand my doing this but she is my daughter, my blood and I felt I had to. I expected the letter, sent by email to either be ignored or returned but was pleasantly surprised,when it wasn’t. A very mature email came back to me, written by the girl I knew her to be. It wasn’t a nice letter as it was full of things that just didn’t happen but it wasn’t a ‘stay away from me’ kind of email that I have had in the past. We have emailed for the past week and I really thought this was a chance to make things right. All I wanted in return was to know why she did the things she did. Why she believed such horrid lies; lies that if they had not been as serious, if they had not affected Lisa and myself so much ,would have been laughable. So far-fetched and stupidly farsicle, I don’t know how anyone would believe them. But she had and I needed to know why. Not to forgive but to accept and move on, whatever that means.
At first I really believed this was what she and I both wanted. I allowed myself to be happy about us for the first time in years. I really thought I had a chance to have my daughter back. Mums and children should not be estranged, it is not normal and is not right. But. Her memories have been rearranged to suit others. She had a lot of stress in the past few years and I believe was vulnerable to someone taking advantage of that. My sister took her chance to alienate her from me. Something she had done when Lisa was a tiny child. One of the reasons I was glad, she, my sister had dropped out of our lives for almost 40 years. So the this past week,emails kept coming and I was over the moon. I knew it would not be back as it used to be but having her back would have been enough, to start with. But me being me, had to know the ‘whys’. I had to know so that I could avoid risking our relationship in the future. Not knowing why, how could I move forward with her? Could I trust it won’t happen again? I am not sure, all I know is,that to accept, I needed to know why. But the ‘whys’ were not forthcoming. She didn’t want to look back or talk about the stories made up about me, about her and her past as my sister had told it. Eventually it became too much for her I think and she thought it best to stop writing. I have to accept that and have left it, against what I wanted, replying that I love her and am always here but felt like she had slapped me in the face after the early emails were so positive and almost warm.
I am sharing this on here, because,for the first time in my married life, I have not told David any of this. Haven’t told him or my other daughter Marie. I know they would always support me even if they were concerned about my getting hurt again, but I haven’t told them. I have told you and hope you can understand why.
So, life needs to go on and I now need to find my role here and have begun that today. We have a sick pony and I am now taking back the responsibility of caring for him.I am also implementing a new plan of action for the ‘farm’, an ‘order of jobs’ etc that need to be carried out in case we put the house on the market later this year. If we don’t, then they will at least have been done. Taking back control is the only way forward. That will, I hope, enable me to accept how things are with my daughter and her family. She knows where I am and I hope will contact me if she needs me. But I need to move on.
Saying goodbye to the past few years is the slap in face for cancer with a little ‘c’, longtime coming! Life was so good before 2013 and it will be again. So Carol Ann is finding her way back. My PC journey is almost over. Post PC will be a better place to be. I have place photos of those I have lost in my study , including my daughter and grandchildren,to help me grieve. Face the truth of how it is now. I will continue to blog but it will be mostly about my life here ‘on the farm’, my writing and my professional role as much as I can talk about that. I will still write about PC and will try my hardest to raise awareness. I am hoping to start a petition to send to the Minister for Health,asking if PSA tests can be carried out as part of any routine blood test unless the patient refuses. At any age and with any history. We need to beat this and the only way of stopping our men suffering and dying is to get early diagnosis and treatment. Watch this space!
Thankyou for reading x
carolannwright 