In order to reconstruct. Something I am intimately familiar with. Luckily I never became an architect since there is something clearly flawed with the way I often construct things. Demonstrated by the present need for collapse and re-build – would be more than a little problematic if it were actual buildings with people in them that I had constructed.

So, now we’re clear (as mud) that I am not talking about buildings, but rather my emotional state, on I go….on to where I’m not sure…

I realised that most of my last posts, and probably for a while now, have been about work rather than cancer, chemo or healing. I have also realised that my decision making along with all else is pretty precarious – is that the right word? No idea really. Fucked is probably a better one, why try to be eloquent when simple terms like ‘fuck’ and ‘fucked’ work so well :)?

I am completely drained on every level – emotionally, physically, spiritually (although not really sure what the latter means for me). I remember writing a while ago on this blog about how my life had been such, for so very long, that I automatically used up my reserves of energy – literally as a normal way of being. That the point where most people hit a wall did not apply to me because I would summon up the last drops to propel me forwards over and over again – not even consciously anymore. And that I had to stop because doing that consistently for years is not healthy as those reserves are needed to keep well. Whoops.

Perhaps where I am now is completely normal for anyone 5 months into chemo. Who knows really: chemo is brutal and there is no escaping that fact. I still believe had I sat at home and done nothing other than chemo I would have been far worse – obsessing over every side effect, whether or not I was responding – driving myself nuts. I have had work to drive me nuts instead 😉

Its pretty dark at the moment – I have for the most part lost perspective on most things  but its not ‘in the pit’ dark although I know I could fall anytime at the slightest thing. However, I am very grateful I am not in there right now. I fucked up with my son this morning over FaceTime – triggering a meltdown – and I completely lost it in myself – sobbed, in bits and so on. Which pretty much sums things up – I just don’t, for now, have the balance or emotional reserves to cope with the most minor of things, allowing them to become major deals when of course they are not. Its 12.21pm here right now and I cannot really get out of bed – which is OK. I actually got some sleep last night, which is amazing – first time in a long time. I know the further and further away I get from the stress at work, the better I will sleep – my head still spins with all the bullshit at 2, 3, 4am.

Weirdly, it feels a bit like when I was first diagnosed with cancer back in July – all quite surreal, despair never far away, constant sense of looking around and not really recognising where I am, quite literally at times. Like everything that is familiar is suddenly not. I described it before as waking up and finding that everything in your room has changed, you get used to it, then it changes again and you don’t know when it will happen. Now nothing seems to be moving, but I keep looking around and it all feels tenuous, like it is fading in and out. Can’t really describe it that well, but what keeps happening is that I (involuntarily) retreat from all that is around me, I feel further and further away and my surroundings, people and objects, start fading and become less and less solid. Leaving me feeling like I have nothing to hold on to and I am adrift.

You’ll all be relieved to know I will go and actually see the Marsden shrink when I get back to the UK.