Shocked to find my last post was in December last year. I have now moved into a tiny little dollshouse of a cottage where I intend to stay for all of my foreseeable life. White and blue, sunny verhandahs, a little chandelier and my pictures hung, my iron bed the home of countless feathers and down stuffed into pillows upon pillows upon a ‘feather bed’ mattress topper. A proper home for my piano. A delightful back yard with fruit trees and herbs and even a hammock. And a cat, who’s christened name is Bilbo, but I am convinced his spiritual name is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, depending. Wolf Blass Pinot Grigio. Any Sauvignon Semillon Blanc from the Adelaide Hills. Birds. Fresh air. Just being so bloody grateful for being alive and healthy.
A lot of the time, I am insensibly happy and content. Sitting on the front verandah in the sun with a cup of coffee and a book. Looking at my home, inside and out and the beauty of it. Having friends over who don’t leave until the early hours in the morning and who exclaim over how gorgeous and delightful my home is. Innumerable kisses from my loving big little boy. Adoring looks from Dr Jekyll.
But always the underlying. Always. Underlying what? Sadness, for my sister, for my parents, for my sister’s children, for life for beauty for everything. Deep grief and heaviness and, yes, depression. Guilt. Oh so much guilt. Guilt at having survived cancer (careful, early days yet Dris) while my sister is 30 years too young to be living (or should I say dying?) in an old persons’ nursing home. Does she resent me? I can’t get a smile out of her, while she beams for others, I know it’s (most likely, always a qualifier) illogical to think this, but it’s inevitable and it’s there. And on top of that worry because I have mammograms and ultrasounds next week (always an unconscious depression settles in before that annual even too). Worry because, of course, what if its’ come back? I could not tell my parents. Or anyone in my family for that matter. ‘Doing Cancer’ is already hard enough for those of us who are single, but second time around, I’d have to do it totally and entirely alone. My parents are barely coping with what is happening with my sister. No. Not feasible. I could not load that on them. Then I must try and remember to stay in the present and not worry futilely about the future and what may or may not come to pass.
And anger. Anger that this (unfair) thing is happening. Anger that my parents should have to go through this, not to mention my sister, anger that we ALL have to go through this.
But also a more personal anger. So blocked creatively and have been for the longest time. I feel the block viscerally as a ball in the middle of my chest. Unable to write for SO long. A couple of years. I used to find such a release in it–creatively, for just being me, for communicating. If I could cough up this ball. Oh I know where it stems from. A period of time of constant ridiculing and belitting of my ‘writing’ by someone who supposedly cared more than that. And I’m quite angry at him for perpetrating that upon me. And angry at myself for letting myself be affected by it! I believed too much in every word uttered.
Which leads me straight into my womanhood, or lack thereof. Again that same person has a lot to answer for there for certain absolutely unforgiveable comments about my unfitness for ‘heterosexual relationships’. It’s no wonder I feel so divorced from my feminity and sexuality, when you add to that the changes that cancer treatment makes to the body–the scars to the breasts, the effects of enforced menopause, the weight gain. I feel like I do not not how to be a woman. I do not feel like a woman. And I hardly even try and appear to be a woman. After all, I am ‘unfit for relationships’. I have lost my sense of womanhood, my femininity, my sensuality, my sexuality, my mystery, my allure, my whimsy, my creativity … everything that makes up that part of me. And I’m mourning it GOD DAMN IT. And THAT makes me angry too.
So in an effort to counteract all of that, in an effort to find the me that is missing, I am back to reading nurturing non-fiction, and meditating. Trying to find my centre. Trying to find my Goddess. Trying to shed that heavy dark cloak of negativity put on me by the person who has stifled and shrunk me so I would believe I am less than what I am. Oh God, please, trying to find the ability to write again.