All quiet on the western front...

Well you may have noticed that it's been a bit quiet on the western front by my lack of postings. Will I could blame life getting in the way of everything, which indeed it does - not that I'm complaining having swerved what could have been my untimely demise! I could blame summer holidays where we retreated to north of the border with no internet connection (bliss) and concentrating on the needs of my wonderfully demanding family. I could also blame it on dealing with the emotional turmoil of moving my elderly mother into long term residential care and being wracked with guilt even though it was the right thing to do. Or I could blame it on just being plain lazy and not being arsed to write. Or lastly that I had a bit of 'writer's block'.

Well in all honestly it is a combination of all of these, but also and more importantly it's because I am now about to begin to relive a 'journey' (my elusive gap year!) that nearly three years on (can't quite believe where time has gone) I have pushed to the recesses of my mind. However even though it isn't in the forefront of my mind and is just below the surface it keeps cluttering up the way for new stuff to come in and effectively for me to move on. That's why I've been writing this blog. To shift the thoughts, feelings, fears, idiocies and worries away onto the page and out of my head. Even though I want to keep doing this I am procrastinating because I don't know how it's going to make me feel and what deeply buried emotions it might bring up. However I know I have to write it. One of the reasons I keep putting it off is because I feel the need to make it all factually correct so that those reading it who might be going through this will have all the right information. Because I can't remember things like the actual pharmaceutical names of each drug and what it was meant to do and in what dosage it was given (because I can't find my notes) I have feared my accounts would lack authenticity or credibility. 

However this blog is not a medical fact sheet, but an honest account of MY feelings whilst having treatment not anyone else's. It doesn't need to be factually correct and I can even give myself poetic license to exaggerate the facts especially to get cheap laughs - something that hasn't fared me too badly in real life! So I need to stop making excuses and blaming everything and just get back on that horse and start writing again. I think I have been quiet for long enough. 

But one thing that has really spurred me on is a commuter buddy who is a writer (and a proper one at that and not masquerading like me!). I was telling her about my difficulty in beginning to write again and that I was unsure how it was going to make me feel and that I wasn't sure it wouldn't take me to a dark place that I'd find hard to leave. She then said sometimes the best writing you can ever do comes from when you are at your lowest because it is the most honest. Don't wait to feel better as then it can feel contrived. 

I know she is right. It won't be all doom and gloom because it wasn't like that, but I'm now not so frightened of going back there as it's all part of making sense of what happened and me getting better. So normal service will resume very soon. You have been warned...