Oh, I’ve been having a rubbish week. All ouch and sorry for myself and wanting to be more healed, more ready to get on with it all, less tired – and all of it faster. And I KNOW I need to rest, to recuperate, but here’s the thing – before January 3rd (when I was recalled after my mammogram) I felt totally fine. Really well. Incredibly healthy. I was going to advanced yoga and pilates classes, walking almost every day, feeling fitter than I had in years. Since then I had a bunch of biopsies, and then a massive surgery, and now I feel like rubbish. Before, I had cancer in me and I felt great. Now (hopefully, I get pathology results this week) I no longer have cancer in me, but I am broken and cut up and feel rubbish.
It’s taking me back to how I felt in the year or so after the first time round, when I was making my solo show Breaststrokes (cancer, swimming, journeys), and this feeling of (for want of a much better word, when the world is full of so many actual injustices) … ‘injustice’.
At that time so many of my friends were having babies, I was having chemo that was making me infertile.
This time round it’s a bit more about how I live with being middle-aged. That my (sick/healing) body is underlining my middle-aged-ness. And the injustice/unfair part comes when I get out of bed, relieved not to be attached to drains and then I think, well other people don’t have to be grateful they can get out of bed without carrying three drains, why do I have to be grateful for that now? Other people don’t have to be grateful for good surgeons, why do I? Other people don’t have to think “Oh well, I’m doing so much better this week than I was last week”, why do I?
And of course it’s rubbish, I have no idea what’s going on in all those other lives around me, but I know for sure that I cannot possibly be the only person in my terrace, let along my street/borough/city/nation/world having a bad week.
Self Pity Woman is not a glorious sight. (Though maybe she has a very gorgeous black-and-blue cape?)
I hate moaning and I hate complaining and I hate me when I whine. And I feel very whine-y, but it is absurdly hard (for me) to snap out of it just now, when the way I usually ‘snap out of it’ is by exercising – swimming, walking, running, dancing.
And I’m reminding myself it could be so much worse, counting blessings IS of great value. Reminding me that I AM hugely fortunate to be here and now, that I could (through no actions of my own, merely through being born elsewhere) be now having cancer for the second time in a war zone, or somewhere with no treatment at all. All of that.
I know I’m lucky. I know I should be grateful.
And mostly I am.
But sometimes, I want to pout. I want to say it’s not fair.
And even as I do so, I hear my father’s voice saying “Life’s not fair.”
He was a labourer from the age of 14 to 65, died at 67 of his second cancer, was a PoW during WW2 for 4.5 years, he knew about ‘unfair’. And he was right.
Life’s not fair. Get on with your life.
This is me, ten years ago, in Breaststrokes, singing and dancing the ‘Cancer is the answer’/’I don’t want to go’ song.
I love those frames by designer Becky Hurst, I love the way Colin Grenfell lit them and Sue Ridge photographed them so they seemed to be floating.
These are the words. Niall Ashdown made music for it, and Nick Powell recorded it, it’s a very jaunty little number :
Did you eat too much beef, pork
Did you ever talk
On mobiles, or walk
Under pylons?
Did you ever choke, smoke dope,
Snort too much coke?
For a joke? Or wear
Too much nylon?
Oh lord it’s a shame, all the same
There must be something to blame
It’s a wonder you continue to smile
Well I’ve got to go, no
Why don’t I stay?
I’m dying to hear what you say.
Does your bra dig in
to your skin
did you drink yourself thin
on gin and tequila?
Do you use deodorants
Emollients,
chemical exfolliants
Did you get them from an organic dealer?
And what about pills, chills, ills, bills
Sensual thrills?
(I know a really good healer.)
Well I’d love to stay, hey
How could I go?
I’m dying to hear what you know.
I’d like to protest
or even kindly suggest
that in terms of my chest
you don’t know what is best
it’s not the things I repressed
or the times I obsessed
or feeling depressed
that made the lump in my breast
quick before I forget
I’ve read every word on the internet.
Well I’d love to stay, hey
How could I go?
I’m dying to hear what you know.
So if cancer, is the answer
there’s a chance
I’ll have to go
And though I’m grateful
For your faithful
Attempts to help me grow
I don’t want MRI
Radioactive dye
Cat scans and needles that make me cry
Don’t want more chemo
Don’t want more radio
Don’t want my dreams-o to fade-io
I’m just trying to say
In all kinds of ways
I just don’t want to be dead. Yet.
So I’ve got to go, no
Why don’t I stay?
I’m dying to hear what you say.
Not Writing But Blogging 
A big virtual hug to help you through your crap week. My mastectomy is scheduled for next Monday, and if (as I’m sure I will), I get into the self-pity mode, it will do me good to know that someone as brave and brilliant as you has been there too.
I really identified with what you said about feeling so well before the treatment started. I am fit and well and bursting with energy at the moment, and can’t really bring myself to say “I’m ill” because I’m not…yet. But this time next week it will be a different story, I know. Thank heavens for supportive and loving friends and family
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And to you! Hopefully it will help you to know that today I walked almost 2 kilometers, nowhere near as fast as usual pace, but much faster than I managed on Saturday. And I have just done 10 minutes of yoga. Really slow, really gentle, really not pushing myself yoga, but yoga anyway. I suspect our being fit and well before we start is going to be huge part of our recovery. And I’m grateful to whatever part of me realised two years ago that I needed to get fit and well, and pushed me to spend the past year working very hard on it. Huge good luck to you. X
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I believe that sometimes it’s valuable to go through self-pity in order to come out the other side much stronger and more aware of our blessings. Knowing other people are suffering in worse situations isn’t always a help because the here-and-now-and-me is what we need to concentrate on in extremes in order to protect ourselves. I don’t know if I’m making sense but I think one can beat oneself about the head over a self-pitying state which does no good at all. Give into it for a little and cosset yourself! Take care. Sarah
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Thank you Sarah. Oddly, not feeling I have to be positive all the time has helped a great deal. I tend towards positivity, so when I’m down it’s always a real shock to the system. And not a good one!
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It took me many years and setbacks with my disabling condition to realise this myself. Now I give myself permission to wallow and realise that it’s normal! In fact, it wasn’t until the early years of the century when I had a wheelchair part in The Bill and was treated beautifully that I ‘came out’ fully and allowed the occasional self-pitying rant, even if only to myself. Strange how things work out sometimes. I think it was because I’d been keeping my condition quiet in terms of the business and the release from this was exquisite.
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Thank you for this. Makes me feel I’m not alone in my whining x
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I think about this all the time. Self-pity for the things in which I’m unlucky. Guilt about the luck I’ve had.
There is a thought I heard years ago – I think in John Diamond’s column – which helps me a bit, on both fronts. The only answer to the question: “why me?” is “because you are part of the universe, and this is a thing that happens in the universe”. Randomness, and a random distribution of events, is part of the way the universe works.
I know it sounds a bit twee, in a way. I think I share it because I know you’re a Buddhist… so maybe a bit of “universe perspective” doesn’t sound too weird to you? There’s no blame, and very little praise worth having either, for most of the bad luck and good luck we get. It’s just… another sign that we are part of the only universe any of us have ever heard about.
I really hope you continue to improve, and feel better, and recover strongly. Can’t wait to see you again out on the town at some writing party :-).
xxxx
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life is like a dance..steps forward, steps back, and steps on the spot. Quite beautiful really, despite the odd technicality making us trip, have to start back at the beginning, or just look a bit wobbly for a bit. However complicated, contrived, difficult, sparkly and spectacular that dance may be, it is all one amazing performance in this world of ours, with an audience of millions. I’m treading on my own toes this week and on others too, discovering just how hurt they and I can be and wondering ow on earth I get over that..and you dear Stella are struggling with your steps and having to be patient whilst your body catches up. Luckily we both have tomorrow and it could be better. x
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Naomi, the ‘why me’/John Diamond response is great.
I recall, first time round with cancer, someone (a Buddhist) saying to me, “Well if not you, then who? Seriously, is there anyone else you’d rather have this than you?” and in truth, there is not a single person I could imagine wishing this on.
I don’t particularly think it works that way, I think it just is, but knowing I wouldn’t want someone to take this instead of me does help a bit.
As does truly believing I am part of the universe. Joined, connected, less than a dot in a massive (and miniscule) whole. The less than a dot thing is actually remarkably helpful.
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Hello! Sometimes I think we need to shut our internalised parents up and allow ourselves to feel what we’re feeling. I wondered if you’ve come across Swami Pragyamurti’s series of yoga nidra CDs? She runs the Satyananda centre in Balham, has the loveliest, most comforting voice, and I think that the Prana Nidra (It’s CD 6) is very helpful in healing. It’s a lying meditation, about 40 minutes long. Nothing like you’re going through, but I had a badly broken leg four years ago, and found the prana nidra an accessible way back to yoga, and it seemed to help me feel “joined up” again because of the deep work on energy channels. You can buy the CDs from Yoga Matters – http://www.yogamatters.com/product/1136/cdpragynid6/chaturtha-pranayama–introduction-to-prana-nidra-vol-6.html or it may even be available through the library. Wishing you well at every level, and soon.
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That’s brilliant, thank you. Have actually been listening to a great yoga nidra app, recommended by a yoga teacher friend of a twitter friend, and it really helps. I will check these out too, thank you for the link.
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In terms of “universe perspective”, nothing gets me there more reliably than the Hubble Deep Field:
and
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mmmmmmmm. xx
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