(no subject)
I wonder if it is a luxury of a well balanced life that gives us the opportunity and time to write about it? We might post about the things we are worried about at a particular moment, our anxieties, our fears, our anger. But it occurs to me that having the mental health and relative space to ourselves to be able to articulate our feelings, and the willingness to do so, may actually be an indicator that our life is actually progressing in the way that human lives do and overall, we may be doing ok.
I wonder if it might be that the deepest emotions, the most shattering events, are the ones that we can't put words to. A shut down of posting, a silence of the keyboard, often indicates that either a deep happiness or a deep sadness has overtaken our online friend. Someone we care about and wonder about, who after a while we realise is just no longer there.
In the months leading up to my last post in this journal, and in the months since until a week ago, I have been afraid that I might have cancer. While part of me trusted my intuition that I did not, part of me thought about how I would live the rest of my life if I did, and how much longer that life might be.
In the same period, my father had a life threatening operation. I flew home across the country when I got the news, and stayed with him for two weeks, my mother and I taking shifts to nurse him. I cut up his food, I fed him, I emptied his bedside bottle of urine, I fought for him and tried to make the doctors and nurses do their job. One day I sat in the car park of the hospital at the end of the night and I cried until I was empty of tears, and I still wanted to cry more.
While I was home, I saw an old lover. We made love, and it comforted me. I had no words for my family or my friends, or for my current lover. I had no words in my head, no words anywhere. But touch was something I still understood and for an hour or two I thought only of memories, of my past love for him and my current love for him, and of the way that almost half my life later, he still loves me with a loyalty of passion that no one else has yet matched. Other men have loved but no one yet has loved as long. He had me at my best, in my bloom of youth - stunning, eager, passionate about exploring everything I could, including our bodies. Now that has all faded, no part of me is as beautiful as it once was, even my heart itself is damaged. And yet he still wants me, he still touches me with the same intensity as he always did, as though it is my youthful body in his hands again, rather than that of a woman approaching 30, no longer in her prime, no longer slim and flawless.
In this same period of time, the younger brother of one of my best friends, a handsome healthy happy 24 year old, was diagnosed with leukaemia. Almost every day I call her or email her, one week I sent her flowers at work. When she found out that her bone marrow is not a match for his a few weeks ago, I arranged for myself to have the test. At the moment they can't get him into remission, and he can't have a transplant unless they can get his white blood count low enough for a transplant to have any effect. Last week the doctors talked for the first time about his percentage chance for survival. I am terrified for her that he will not make it. I don't think she will cope if he doesn't, and I don't know how anyone ever does.
A couple of weeks ago, I almost resigned from my job. The job that has made me happier than any other job has ever done, with the boss who I respect more than any other I've ever had. But he did not support me in the way that I needed him to when my father had his operation, and I could not forgive him for that. He expected me to and allowed me to continue on working while I was away, and did not intervene when his senior lawyer criticised me for not being more available. When I said I couldn't do it any more, he did not assure me that it was ok, and he stayed silent. I thought about how much cash I had, how much I could earn part time, how I would pay my mortgage, and I almost left. Instead I undertook a three week process of discussions and negotiations with him and with Human Resources, and he has apologised and we are starting to repair things. But for such a long time my world was falling down around my ears, in crashes of glass and plaster.
On Wednesday my father had a stroke. It is a side effect of the operation - one we knew was a strong possibility but that we had allowed ourselves to forget, now that it's been more than a month. On Tuesday the GP told mum that a stroke still couldn't be ruled out, and the following day his prediction came true. Dad's speech is affected, and the left side of his body. Yet somehow it's as though the stroke has repaired some long damaged pathways in his brain, the ones that have been eaten away or calcified over by his dementia. We had a conversation on Friday and I realised, probably for the first time, just what had been stolen from us by his illness. I heard the man he was meant to be, the father I have never known as an adult, and for the first time I was angry with his dementia for what it did to him and to me. My mother was in denial about it for many years, but I always accepted it. Aside from the 'transition' period when it slowly developed, when he was very angry a lot of the time, his fundamental personality has not changed. It's just his memory, it's not the person that he is, and so I have accepted it. But when we spoke he asked me questions about myself, about my work and my house and about me, things he has never asked me before. He listened in a way that he hasn't done since I was a child. He spoke to me like an adult father to his adult daughter, a father who cares so much about her life and her happiness. I never knew how much I had missed out on having that from him. I never let myself think about what I had lost, only ever what I still had, and how much worse it could have been.
I don't know how long the pathways are going to stay open, or how much longer we will have him here. He spoke about his mother, dead for more than 40 years, and wondered if he would find her. He's not religious, and I think he knows something about how much longer he has left.
Not for the first time, I have thought about the multitude of trauma and pain that so many people suffer. I wonder about how people get up every day and keep on with their lives. It is a matter of wonder to me that not more people drop out of life, quitting it literally or effectively, or self medicating themselves into oblivion. We tend to assume that the people around us, our workmates, our coffee maker, the guy standing next to us on the train, are leading simple, probably fairly boring if stable lives. But now I realise that it is not remarkable for humans to experience tragedy and suffering, that it is a state of normality, and that what is remarkable is that we manage to distance ourselves so effectively from the commonality of those experiences and treat one another with a level of detachment which would be impossible if we acknowledged the truth.
I wonder if it might be that the deepest emotions, the most shattering events, are the ones that we can't put words to. A shut down of posting, a silence of the keyboard, often indicates that either a deep happiness or a deep sadness has overtaken our online friend. Someone we care about and wonder about, who after a while we realise is just no longer there.
In the months leading up to my last post in this journal, and in the months since until a week ago, I have been afraid that I might have cancer. While part of me trusted my intuition that I did not, part of me thought about how I would live the rest of my life if I did, and how much longer that life might be.
In the same period, my father had a life threatening operation. I flew home across the country when I got the news, and stayed with him for two weeks, my mother and I taking shifts to nurse him. I cut up his food, I fed him, I emptied his bedside bottle of urine, I fought for him and tried to make the doctors and nurses do their job. One day I sat in the car park of the hospital at the end of the night and I cried until I was empty of tears, and I still wanted to cry more.
While I was home, I saw an old lover. We made love, and it comforted me. I had no words for my family or my friends, or for my current lover. I had no words in my head, no words anywhere. But touch was something I still understood and for an hour or two I thought only of memories, of my past love for him and my current love for him, and of the way that almost half my life later, he still loves me with a loyalty of passion that no one else has yet matched. Other men have loved but no one yet has loved as long. He had me at my best, in my bloom of youth - stunning, eager, passionate about exploring everything I could, including our bodies. Now that has all faded, no part of me is as beautiful as it once was, even my heart itself is damaged. And yet he still wants me, he still touches me with the same intensity as he always did, as though it is my youthful body in his hands again, rather than that of a woman approaching 30, no longer in her prime, no longer slim and flawless.
In this same period of time, the younger brother of one of my best friends, a handsome healthy happy 24 year old, was diagnosed with leukaemia. Almost every day I call her or email her, one week I sent her flowers at work. When she found out that her bone marrow is not a match for his a few weeks ago, I arranged for myself to have the test. At the moment they can't get him into remission, and he can't have a transplant unless they can get his white blood count low enough for a transplant to have any effect. Last week the doctors talked for the first time about his percentage chance for survival. I am terrified for her that he will not make it. I don't think she will cope if he doesn't, and I don't know how anyone ever does.
A couple of weeks ago, I almost resigned from my job. The job that has made me happier than any other job has ever done, with the boss who I respect more than any other I've ever had. But he did not support me in the way that I needed him to when my father had his operation, and I could not forgive him for that. He expected me to and allowed me to continue on working while I was away, and did not intervene when his senior lawyer criticised me for not being more available. When I said I couldn't do it any more, he did not assure me that it was ok, and he stayed silent. I thought about how much cash I had, how much I could earn part time, how I would pay my mortgage, and I almost left. Instead I undertook a three week process of discussions and negotiations with him and with Human Resources, and he has apologised and we are starting to repair things. But for such a long time my world was falling down around my ears, in crashes of glass and plaster.
On Wednesday my father had a stroke. It is a side effect of the operation - one we knew was a strong possibility but that we had allowed ourselves to forget, now that it's been more than a month. On Tuesday the GP told mum that a stroke still couldn't be ruled out, and the following day his prediction came true. Dad's speech is affected, and the left side of his body. Yet somehow it's as though the stroke has repaired some long damaged pathways in his brain, the ones that have been eaten away or calcified over by his dementia. We had a conversation on Friday and I realised, probably for the first time, just what had been stolen from us by his illness. I heard the man he was meant to be, the father I have never known as an adult, and for the first time I was angry with his dementia for what it did to him and to me. My mother was in denial about it for many years, but I always accepted it. Aside from the 'transition' period when it slowly developed, when he was very angry a lot of the time, his fundamental personality has not changed. It's just his memory, it's not the person that he is, and so I have accepted it. But when we spoke he asked me questions about myself, about my work and my house and about me, things he has never asked me before. He listened in a way that he hasn't done since I was a child. He spoke to me like an adult father to his adult daughter, a father who cares so much about her life and her happiness. I never knew how much I had missed out on having that from him. I never let myself think about what I had lost, only ever what I still had, and how much worse it could have been.
I don't know how long the pathways are going to stay open, or how much longer we will have him here. He spoke about his mother, dead for more than 40 years, and wondered if he would find her. He's not religious, and I think he knows something about how much longer he has left.
Not for the first time, I have thought about the multitude of trauma and pain that so many people suffer. I wonder about how people get up every day and keep on with their lives. It is a matter of wonder to me that not more people drop out of life, quitting it literally or effectively, or self medicating themselves into oblivion. We tend to assume that the people around us, our workmates, our coffee maker, the guy standing next to us on the train, are leading simple, probably fairly boring if stable lives. But now I realise that it is not remarkable for humans to experience tragedy and suffering, that it is a state of normality, and that what is remarkable is that we manage to distance ourselves so effectively from the commonality of those experiences and treat one another with a level of detachment which would be impossible if we acknowledged the truth.