The insomnia sucks. Really bad this time – since the last chemo – haven’t actually slept one full night, or even remotely close to it since last Tuesday. Its really difficult to not get in a complete spin about it – functioning with chronic lack of sleep at the best of times is difficult, combining it with cancer and chemo is fucking ridiculous. Tonight, well last night, fell asleep around 11pm, up at 1.42am, here now, have to wake up around 6 or 6.30am then actually go to Dublin for the day – land back here at 9.45pm. To say I am dreading it would be an understatement – but I wonder how I stop that – the panic about no sleep? That horrible, ‘oh no, I am going to feel so dreadful, shit, its going to be awful’ etc etc. Hard not to get into it, because the fact is that 90% those thoughts are right – I will feel crap, I am much less able to cope, I become an emotional mess and so forth.

The Man had a long distance go at me the night before last via skype – as I collapsed in a heap at 7pm in bed. And he was right – trying to do it all – the work stuff in particular was getting really intense and draining, both what is going on in work and the amount of it. So yesterday morning I stayed in bed when the kids got up, Hayley brought them to school, I crashed out for another 2 hours and then did very little work, saw the wonderful acupuncturist, saw the chiropractor (which seemed to undo some of the acupuncture good stuff, go figure) and felt a lot better yesterday evening. What was also really interesting was how I reacted to him – I actually listened to him, registered what he was saying, and felt loved. I am honestly not sure I have experienced that before – letting someone care for me in that way. He made me promise I would send an e-mail to a few people the next morning saying I was offline, which I did, and forwarded to him – and he thanked me, for doing it. I mean, not just sending to him…thanking me for my ability to hit ‘forward’ would be a bit scary…but for actually sending the mail itself. I was completely blown away by the whole thing – not many people will take me on but he does and is not scared of me – that is a first. Navigating a relationship while feeling so intensely vulnerable is, lets say, interesting – I feel at such an immense disadvantage a lot of the time. While actually I know on another level that it is opening doors I wouldn’t let open if things were ‘normal’ and that is incredibly positive.

OK – I am boring myself now. I cannot fully connect with myself, which I am sure is linked to the lack of sleep – the head spinning caused by not being fully in myself. I feel quite emotionally disconnected – I can talk/write about a lot of stuff, but not on a fully real level – I could likely fall into the poor me’s very easily with the lack of sleep thing and the 6 million other side effects, but that is not truly what is going on, I realise now as I am writing. There is something underlying, emotionally, that is bouncing me ‘out of myself’ and when that happens, my head always spins – I move into the headspace and not the heart/gut space. No idea what it is, but a first step is to recognise it which, thanks to writing this, has happened.

On the plus side, I have probably bored all of you to sleep, if not myself just yet. Well, plus side if you are in the same vague timezone as me – not so much if you are in the middle of your work day.