And back to the rollercoaster. I’m splashing around, but still only feel like my face is actually out of the water – you know that image of all of your body in water and just your face visible on the surface? Its like that today.

I had a long distance argument of sorts with The Man last night, preceded by a an uncomfortable skype call the night before. Neither particularly major in themselves, but enough to tip me over the edge. I feel vaguely uncomfortable writing about this here, to do with loyalty and respect to him, but in fact it is actually very little to do with him and a lot more to do with me.

Today is the first day I have really resented having cancer – angry at how vulnerable it makes me, almost feeling ashamed of how weak I feel. I cried myself to sleep and cried myself awake – not written to evoke sympathy or even empathy – but rather that I resent it. Its an uneven playing field and I am at the lower end of that field – a relatively small disagreement sends me off the edge, into what feels like a enormous pool of grief and sadness.

I can’t stop crying – I just cancelled what promised to be a fun morning going to Amman’s organic food market with some colleagues – knowing that going would be so much better than sitting here, but I genuinely don’t have it in me right to ‘pull myself together’. I’m sure I do have that somewhere, but I can’t do it alone.

Which is another thing I resent today – having to constantly ask for help. I know you are all wonderful – truly I do – but I wish I also knew I could do this alone. It sometimes feels like the choice has been taken from me, I desperately need others because I believe I won’t make it otherwise, rather than choosing to ask for help. If that makes any sense.

I recently described it to The Man – its like I am walking along, then suddenly the ground under me fragments, becomes unstable and I go from being completely sure about where I was going and what I was doing to utter uncertainty about the next step. I don’t know when this will happen, it could be anytime. If I take a wrong step, I fall between the cracks into the dark water that sucks me in and takes a lot of energy to come back out of. Or I stand paralysed in fear, not wanting to move because of the uncertainty, of making a wrong move, all my instincts and intuition that I rely on are suddenly hazy and unclear. All of the markers in my life I use to make emotional decisions, ones that I don’t think about, are suddenly put into question – I am looking around desperately for some stability to replace them when it happens. And that stability comes from asking for help and trust. From The Man and from all of you. But the loss of the self reliance piece, the intuition, the ability to take the steps, is indescribably difficult. I live by my intuition – its my strongest guide and driving force in life – and living now with that regularly in question is…words are failing me. Another metaphor – constantly coming home or waking up to all the furniture and your personal items having been changed around in your home. You have no idea how it happened, what the hell is going on, but the fact remains that they have all been moved, tampered with and you don’t know when it will happen again, you just know it will happen. So as you think you have got used to the change, they get moved again. Thats what its like.

So that is where `i am – I slipped between the cracks yesterday evening, to join up the metaphors, into the water where only my face is surfacing on and off for air. And I’m so fucking tired after 15 hours of this so far – I’ll get to the surface, I’ll get up onto one of the wobbly pieces, they will solidify for a while and I’ll feel stable. Temporarily. Now and later, I have no idea if the disagreement we had is my fault, or his, or both – because the impact was so severe the actual cause becomes irrelevant. My instinct is to withdraw because the vulnerability is so incredibly raw, like a whole bunch of open nerve endings, the fall down so deep, the grief so intense. So I want to shut down – so very much I want to do that. And yet because I have cancer I know that doing that is unhealthy, that I must reach out, let the grief out, express how I am feeling, feel what I am feeling – shut down is not about love, its about protecting the hurt, love heals hurt. I just don’t feel very loving or loveable right now – like anyone coming close will hurt me even unintentionally because the rawness feels so vast.

Right here, right now, I don’t have the answers. That much at least I have learned is OK.