Tomorrow is only a week away

Hello, lovelies. 

        Life is ever changing. One day we’re up on this whole adulting thing, and the next we want to give up, climb back into bed and sleep the day off. But one thing is for certain and that is we know our own bodies. Okay, so as we get older bits of us start to hurt, our ability to remember why we walked into a room can be shaky, but by and large we know ourselves and what we can expect from our mind, bodies and spirits. But what happens when our bodies change and stop doing what they’ve always done? What happens when all our tricks and tips stop, and we are left feeling different or odd and as far away from what is normal? Does it mean that this is the end of life as we know it? Should we give up and walk away? Or is it at that very moment that it is more important stop, breathe and fight with all we’ve got for ourselves.    

      Growing up I never really understood the concept of what personal boundaries meant. Honestly, it was only up to a few years ago that someone sat me down and explained what they actually were. Up until that point I had assumed that it was normal to push past my very last breaking point. So what if I was exhausted. So what if I had nothing left to give. I just knew that I needed to keep going. So I did. On and on and on. I could never understand why other people needed rest days. Or time off to recuperate. There was always so much to do, how could I justify a moment off to sit down, breathe or, heaven forbid, relax. But I wasn’t alone in my lack of boundary setting. My wonderful mother would work herself to the point of collapse, just to meet a deadline, self-imposed or not. She would then be wiped out for days, trying to regain control over her body. Only to repeat the process ad nauseam. No wonder I didn’t have the best idea of what selfcare was. But she wasn’t the main reason behind my fundamental lack of any form of boundary setting. That would come from two separate directions. And the first one came in the form of my ex-husband. 

        As a teenager, I always saw myself on the outside. Other girls my age were prettier, better dressed and just overall nicer people that I could ever try to be. Looking back now, I can clearly see that that was not the case, but at the time it was very easy to believe it. When I met my husband, I was 17, very opinionated, loud and full of far too much energy. He on the other hand, was 23 and the appearance of cool, calm and collected. It was very easy for me to fall for the story of who he was trying to be, and who he thought I was. And that’s how narcissists groom and manipulate their emotional supply, which is what I became to him. His supply. Over the years he isolated, controlled and abused me. But that wasn’t the worst of it. It was the way he made me feel and think about myself that I have the most difficulty getting over. If I sat down for a mere second then I was a complete failure, and he would love to tell me so. Regardless if he had spent the day sitting on the sofa watching me run around after his children and cleaning his house. If I dared to take a break, then he would berate me for being the laziest person on the planet. And that fed into my dark deep-rooted lack of sense worth. So I learnt to just keep going and push through. The second direction come from much closer to home. It came from me. Instead of stopping and asking the hard question why I was pushing myself too hard, it was easier for me to assume that I was at fault. I was lazy, I’d been told that so many times how could it not be true. If life was hard, then I should just keep pushing. Not enough money coming in, then I would go out and find myself another job. If my house was a mess, then I wasn’t going to stop until it was tidy again. It was always an uphill battle with 3 children living at home. It was so much easier to blame myself than to stop, breathe and think what it actually was that I was trying to do. And that’s what I have been forced to do this past week. 

       Just a mere twelve weeks ago, I had no idea that I was sick. But with the amazing NHS I have had a very large and problematic cyst removal and the smallest cluster of cancer cells found and removed from my body. And if that was it, then I would be back to where I started and running at full speed again. But cancer has had other ideas for my next five months. As, although I am currently cancer free, there is a 15% chance that it might come back again, larger and scarier than before, and none of us what that. I was put on a three-weekly cycle of chemotherapy. I really didn’t want to do it. But there wasn’t a choice. And to say that it was a boring procedure would be an understatement. Having to sit still for four hours was an almost impossible task for me. They told me that there may be one or two side effects, and that was the price of living a long and healthy life. What they didn’t tell me was the pain and utter exhaustion I would go through. At one point it was so bad I really didn’t think that I could go on. I could barely lift my head. Trying to have one thought at a time was impossible. And the pain that comes with one of the drugs was unbearable. How could anyone live a normal life through all that? I just couldn’t go on anymore. 

       As the days slowly wore on, I told my best friend that I wasn’t going to do the chemo anymore, as they were killing me with the cure. She smiled agreed with me and then said that next time I go in for a cycle, I should ask for some lovely pain relief to take home with me. She knew that I was struggling, knew I was in pain, but knew that I was going to do it all over again every three weeks. Damn that woman for always being right.

        I tried to push through. I tried drinking coffee and eating chocolate just to give me that false boost of energy so I could keep going. I ate sugar filled sweets as I went back to work. All those things that have worked in the past, weren’t working now. How could my body let me down so much? Didn’t it know that I have to go back to work? That I have bills to pay and a life to lead? Why had it just stopped working and what was I going to do about it? 

       Thankfully a week later the pain has almost gone and today is the first day that I feel like myself again, and so far, no hair loss. It took a week for the horrible but lifesaving drugs to do what they need to do to make me live. A week. That’s it. And it hit me. Life is not for running. There is absolutely no point in trying to do everything all the time.

       It took me seven days to realise that I needed to go at a slow and gentle pace. My body wasn’t trying to stop me, but rather tell me what I needed to do, but I was so used to running and not breathing that I didn’t listen. I’ve started having long leisurely baths. Allowing my new man to rub my shoulders. And letting my children do some of the housework, none of which I would have been able to do before. I still find it hard, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Sitting down and relaxing doesn’t make me a failure. Not having the cleanest house doesn’t mean that I’m wrong or bad. It makes me human. It took a week from hell to understand that selfcare and gentle understanding is the only way forward.