Me, Myself, I...

The following is written retrospectively and NOT in real time. I am currently four years in remission and intend to be so for the foreseeable future...

So I need to confess...

I've really been neglecting my blog big time as any of you who have followed me will very much know. It's not out of laziness, or writer's block or that I don't actually wish to write it anymore. It's just that life is moving on and I'm getting further away from that person who first started writing this. It's not that I'm at all thinking "I'm alright Jack, stop bleating on about cancer!"  That couldn't be further from the truth. Of course there is an element of wanting to live life and not spend too much time on reflecting on those darker, scarier days. However I never, ever, ever forget that where I am right now is really just a moment in time and I still don't know, as do any of us, what time we have left. I am never complacent about my current good health because I have lost so many close friends and family to this unforgiving, uncaring and indiscriminate disease that I never take my current cancer-free situation for granted. I am permanently in remission until I'm not! That's the way it is. I no longer begrudge it. I just accept it as my life and get on with it. But in getting on with life I've neglected my writing.

My writing of this blog was so incredibly cathartic for ME. It allowed ME to just pour all MY emotions into one readily accepting receptacle. I could just churn out MY thoughts in a very self indulgent way, selfishly focusing on ME and what happened to ME, how I dealt with it and what it did to ME. The situations I encountered and the people I met, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...So as you can see, by highlighting certain words there was a lot of 'ME', 'MY' and  'I' going on. Actually Joan Armatrading wrote a fabulous song (and album) entitled, "Me, Myself, I". However my sentiments are certainly not the same as Ms Armatrading. And as for what Freud would have made of my "Ego and Id"! I think he'd have had a field day!!!!!

So in the midst of the "Me-fest" (tickets available through Ticketmaster!) life started to change and I was reminded that it really could not continue to be about me. There were others who, as Derren Brown might say to a hapless hypnotherapy victim, needed me "Back in the Room".

So my elongated silence is because I have been concentrating on those who have needed me, who have lived through the cancer with me for way too long and needed a big dose of attention and love - my dear, dear family. Unfortunately on the way one of my 'tribe', my gorgeous mother, passed away. Although in the latter years of her life she had dementia and was, in fairness, unaware of my battle with cancer, she was still very much part of the world that had endured the full on aftermath of diagnosis. It was only right in her last few years that I put 'me' on hold to look after her as she had always looked after me in life.

A year and half has passed by and even though missing her madly every day, the pain of grief is subsiding and I am now left with so many happy and joyous memories that I am eternally grateful and honoured that this amazing woman was my Mum and made me into the woman that I am today. I hope I'm doing her proud.

So life is taking another turn. I quit a job I love as I refused to let the stress of commuting via Southern Rail (don't think I need to say anymore) take over my life and impact on my precious family especially my little boy. I hadn't gotten through my cancer battle to be spending inordinate amount of hours waiting around on cold station platforms for trains that never came or if they did were so rammed you couldn't get on. It was a very poignant and difficult decision to make as it was the first job I took after recovering from treatment. I felt so lucky to have an amazing manager and fantastic colleagues and the work was so interesting. I don't think I have ever said or remotely thought this about any other job, but I just loved going to work which is quite something to say. I honestly thought it would be the one I would stay in until I decided, on my terms, that I would leave. However that was taken out of my hands. 

Ever the optimist I try to think that maybe it was for a good reason in the end. I have thankfully found an interesting job nearer to home (20 minutes on the bus, as am now traumatised by train travel for life or even in the summer an hours bike ride, though who am I kidding!). I am starting to remind myself of the things that I loved to do before work, responsibilities, ill health, money worries, anxiety, stress (the list is endless...) got in the way. So I've started to explore other things beyond work and my family that give me my identity back. So I'm hosting a weekly radio show on a local internet station, I'm singing and playing ukelele and jamming with proper musicians and am about to embark upon running some local music club nights in the New Year. I'm going to be around more for my family, take my little boy to school which he's delighted about and still get to do a job I enjoy along with those extra curriculum bits and bobs that keep me happy. So in the end all is good.

But lastly it means I can get back to writing my blog. Finishing off this story which needs to be finished and really moving on properly with life. Because right here, right now there is definitely life after cancer or a cancer diagnosis and even though time, at times, can be tricky and challenging (because nothing is ever the same after the 'C' word!) there's also no reason why it can't be uplifting, joyous and fun too. I never thought it ever would be again, but slowly and surely its getting there. I'll try and keep the momentum up from now on I promise...

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...