FEAR

Late May, early June 2012
So, ironic as it sounds, I had never felt better physcially. How was I mentally? Mentally, well, that was another matter. You are dealing with your own fears and dodging other people's.  I read recently with regard to children that it takes about 6 positive remarks to undo the effects of one negative one.  My greatest challenge to date, two months on, is dealing with two things, fear and fear.  The first is the fear you generate on your own, and the second is that of other's who unwittingly pass it on through their words, intonation, actions, looks and body language. Then there is the advising, the sermonising but not supporting, telling you how you are supposed to feel, telling you what you are supposed to do, not listening or accompanying you, telling you the bleedin' obvious as if it hadn't occurred to you because that's how they deal with their own fear, by containing and controlling it, but you have unfortunately sparked off their fear in the first place by getting cancer. There has also been the fear of going against what the majority say I should do and having the courage to listen to my body and its wisdom and do what I need to do for myself. There have been so many parallels with pregnancy throughout this process, and as with pregnancy, your body and health become public property to some extent.  One of the many invaluable lessons I've learned from this is to connect with this inner strength, to become TRULY centred and to stand up for myself with doctors, bossy-boots and know-it-alls! Not in a confrontational way (although that's how I had done all my life) but with a calm confidence that comes from connecting with the power within you.  It was a learning process of a lifetime, it's what I'd been striving for in yoga and meditation over the last ten years and I only had glimpses of it, then it finally came about at the end of November 2012! But back in May and June I was still pretty confrontational, confused, learning to deal with so much information and so many emotions. Each day felt like a lifetime of experience, you simply HAVE TO live one day at a time (sorry for the clichés), and there are days when you can, and days when you can't.  There are days when you connect with the happiness and strength in you, and days when you don't.

Happiness comes and goes.  Fear comes and goes.  The fear was greatest, or it seemed more acute,  in the first couple of months when there's so much to come to terms with, when it's a battle to accept the new circumstances you're in and when certain hopes and dreams about how you want your life to be, well they're squashed flat.  For good.  The last chance to have children, gone.  On one day it seems like a tragedy, then the next it's not.  There were a few nights when I couldn't go to sleep because my mouth was parched (from pure distilled fear - of the unknown, of my life taking a wrong turn, of feeling ill and being in pain, of dying) and I couldn't drink enough to quench the thirst.  It seemed my worst moments were brought on from doctor's and hospital visits and from people projecting their fear onto me.  I can't and don't blame anyone.  How could I? As far as projecting fear goes, I had had exactly the same reaction when my mum was diagnosed with a the previous autumn.  And nobody was responsible for my reactions except myself.