Pain

Pain is my nemesis.

My cross to bear.

Burning spreads across my chest.

Tentacles snake up my neck ... across my shoulders... down my arms...

If I drew it, it would look like a molten heaving mass - black, and red, and yellow...

Fatigue melts my flesh ‘til it feels liquid and heavy... 

the only respite - 

Be a horizon on a bed of relief. 

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

My soul whispers...

“Let go of the sea of shame.

The dishes will wait.

The floors will stay unswept.

No one is coming to judge your decor.

Let go.”

I lay as an horizon. 

My body at rest...restore...repeat.

I’ve been here before,

I’ve risen.

I will.

Again.

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What’s in a name?

A thousand years ago, or so it seems, when I started this blog I had no idea what to call it. At the time, I was living on a farm in the picturesque Noosa Hinterland, at the end of a very long drive way, on top of a hill. God I miss that place. It’s the longest I have ever lived anywhere.

I started blogging originally as a way to record what was going on in my life. The interesting conundrum of having a foot in two different parenting camps - a baby, and tweens, that became a toddler and teens. The break down of my marriage to my youngest child’s father. The recognition that there was more going on in my fractured brain then PTSD.

As time passed, and I moved, my blog name became synomous with my life. Like a hill, there has been ascents, descents and good old plateaus. On reflection, probably not a lot of plateaus, and an awful lot of ups and downs. And my blog morphed into a place where I talked about child sexual abuse, attempted to venture into the “commercial” blogging arena - unsuccessfully, shared words that formed poems that captured my moods and feelings, talked about breast cancer.... and then I stopped. I didn’t stop writing. I just stopped pressing publish.

I felt too raw, too full of emotional turmoil, too loud, too honest. Too much.

I shared my blog with someone new recently. It prompted me to read through my words and I was surprised at how well they read, how elequont they were. In a beautiful moment of synchronicity, the next day I was invited to a group that had been formed on Facebook, “The ‘Old School Blogger’s’ Reunion page, full of people that I had met and conversed with online and in real life. Some are still blogging, some of let it go. As I read through the conversation and recognised names, names of people that had been a very real part of my life, I realised that I need to start writing again, and pressing publish.

So here I am. Renewed, reinvigorated and real.

And if I’m too much, then too bad.

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Fractured (June 2014)

I wrote this in mid 2014, but never pressed publish. I have several posts that have sat in the draft folder waiting. I have all these words inside me, constantly pushing against my psyche, demanding to be told. So tell them I shall. 

"It could be worse."

I've lost count of the number of times I have had that said to me.

No shit sherlock. Tell me something I don't know. I could have had invasive DCIS, had to have chemotherapy, and all the horrible things you have to endure through that, or had to have a bilateral mastectomy, or be terminal stage 4.

Knowing all those things didn't make me feel any better. To be honest, it really pissed me off when people said "it could be worse" to me. I wanted to say, "Well, when you get diagnosed with cancer, let me know how you feel about it then, mhmm? ok?" But I didn't.

For the most part people say things not to minimise your experience, but instead to highlight the positives. Unfortunately, when you are first diagnosed with cancer, you have trouble seeing absolutely anything positive about it. All you can see, feel, breathe is the fact that your body, for reasons unknown to you, has turned on itself. That there are cells in you that have the potential to kill you. Take your life away. Destroy you.

That is what was going through my head back in March this year. That, and a big WHAT THE FUCK!? Had I not already suffered enough? Had I not already fought and wrestled with a enough demons to last several peoples lifetimes?

I thought I had endured battles before. But this year... this year has to have been the biggest battle I have fought. A couple of weeks after I was diagnosed, and making the decision that my boys needed to go and live with their fathers,  I had what I can only describe as a psychotic break. I completely lost it. Flipped my lid. Lost the plot. It was not pretty, and I believe the closest to insanity I have ever come.

I got in my car, left my boys behind - a hurt that I will carry in my heart forevermore - and screamed and howled and sobbed as I drove. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't care. I was beyond caring. My brain had fractured into a million tiny pieces. Nothing made sense. Reality and fiction were one and the same. Rationality and irrationality had merged into a black vortex of confusion and despair. I couldn't breath, I couldn't think, I couldn't see, I couldn't feel, I felt too much, thought too much, saw too much. I was numb, yet feeling everything intensified infinitely.

My beautiful boys were picked up by the police - a hurt that I will carry in my heart forevermore - and taken to the police station, where someone, who was once a friend, picked them up and looked after them. Me - I had ended up in a car park of a popular tourist attraction, punching decline, decline, decline, as my phone kept ringing.

The screaming, howling, crying abated. My consciousness left my body and hovered above, in a state of disconnect.

And there I stayed for far longer then I thought I would.

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I just slayed a demon (or letters to the narcissist. Same. Same.)

Thank you for the conversation. It was one that needed to be had.

You didn't ask about my daughter. She's coming back to Brisbane. 😊 This makes me very happy.

Besides yoga gym work, repeat, and doing everything possible to take care of this vessel my soul walks around in. It's all about the zen.
Like I said, I am not the same person I was 12 months ago. I look at photos of her and think I'm not her anymore.

I am truly sorry that you are in a dark place. I hope you can find your way out. And be that person I know you are able to be.
The one that takes care of his body, and soul.
The one that owns his behaviour,
The one that doesn't lie and tell half truths.
The one that does the work on becoming the best version of themselves.
The one that gets the help he needs.

I was surprised to hear you say that you had seen the boys. And when I did, I truly hoped that some miracle had happened, that you were getting help, taking care of yourself and dealing with your demons. Clean and sober. I prayed to the universe that you were telling me the truth.

I was really disappointed to find out you lied. Again. And my heart broke a little. All over again.

There has not been one day in the last 12 months that I have not thought of you. And felt sad. And heart broken. And so confused.

You know what you need to do. But don't do it. And only you can make the changes. Do the work. Set your soul free.
The truth really will set you free. But first it will piss you off.
Deal with those emotions. Ask why the truth is pissing you off. And get the help you need.

you are with someone, yet feel alone...She's not able to give you what you need to heal. Only you can do that.

I really do wish you peace. Dancing with demons is exhausting. Casting those demons off is soul freeing.

I've walked through fire. And I am a motherfucking Phoenix rising.

V

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Salt water

In the past when I've been caught in the sea of emotions, and the waves start rolling in, I've tried to out run them. I'd get caught, and picked up and tossed around, turning over and over, lost in the turbulence. Or I would try to jump over them, only to get a slap of emotion across the head, the force throwing me off balance.

This time I trying something different. I'm diving into those waves. Sometimes there are only moments to catch my breath before I have to dive again. And sometimes I get to lift my face to the sun, and it dries my tears before the next set of waves arrives.

Diving under those waves doesn't feel as chaotic as trying to outrun them or jump over them.

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The conversations I didn't think I'd ever be having

I had to go to the ladies when I was out to dinner with my daughter and her partner, so I could let my tears fall without having to give an explanation.

I didn't want to tell my beautiful girl that I was crying because I'm terrified that I won't get to see all the magnificent things that she is going to do. That I
was crying because hearing others making plans a year into the future,  both terrifies me, and makes me sad. I don't make plans that far into the future any more.

During dinner someone said to me, "You can come too." as they discussed plans for a cruise. I quipped back,"I don't even know what I'm doing next week.

Every feeling I have is often quickly followed by another. Staying in one feeling is difficult. My feelings are like a butterfly flitting from flower to leaf, leaf to flower.

The one consistent thing about cancer is that the treatment is fucking relentless. Surgery. Radiation. Chemotherapy. Medication. They all come with their own set of side effects and consequences. My life now is a constant process of managing them.

I dodged the chemo bullet. Not the others though. The one plaguing my life right now is hormone blockers. Fatigue like I've been rolled over by a steamroller, repeatedly. Aching joints, bones, body, and that's just getting out of bed. Mood swings, where the tiniest things will irritate me, or tears will roll down my cheeks, just because. Eye things, that make me clean my already clean glasses constantly, because I'm sure that it will remove the annoying visual disturbance. A decrease in my bone density, making my bones brittle. A vagina drier then the fucking Sahara desert. (Did you know that your vagina can hurt from dryness WITHOUT EVEN HAVING SEX??!!?! Who'd have thunk it?!)

I had a conversation with my beautiful girl about hormone blockers. About stopping taking them. It wasn't received very well. I'm not stopping taking them. Just thinking about it at this stage. I'll wait until I have a bone density scan in December and depending on the results, discuss it with my oncologist.

My daughter said to me today, "I don't think you'd survive it a third time Mum."

These types of  conversations are ones that I never thought I'd be having with my children. I thought I'd see all the things, Do all the things. I thought i had time. Instead now I feel like a ticking time bomb, managing side effects and the potential for cancer to return. Everything I do, from yoga, to the gym, to the supplements and medication I take, to the food I eat, is all done with that in mind. Stop cancer coming back. Again. For round three.

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Forget. Remember. Repeat.

A constant stream of forgetting.
Then remembering.

Clothed, I bear the shape of a woman.
Naked, a prepubescent girl, my chest a battlefield of scars.

The factitious swell of breasts deceives strangers, tricks my mind.
Then a stab of pain, like a lightening bolt through the space were a nipple once lay, shatters the illusion.

My child, feverish and in need of comfort,goes to rest his head upon my chest. He stops as he remembers, and places a cushion where my breasts should be and lays down his head to rest.

I remember how, in the before time, an infant grew, nourished by the magic manna that my body made.

A lovers embrace isn't as easy as it once was. He stumbles, conscious of not wanting to hurt scars that are numb. I'm still learning how to move in this altered body of mine. In the heat of passion I forget. Then remember, as my lover's thumb traces the scars.

A constant stream of forgetting. Then remembering.

I wonder when, or even if, the remembering and  forgetting ever moves into acceptance.

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Denail is a river - June

source



"It's back. It's back. It's back."




Like an endless loop, those words scream in my head, my gut, every single fucking cell in my body, screaming IT'S BACK.


"No. No, its not. Lightening doesn't strike twice in the same place."


This is an example of my internal dialogue after finding a lump again in the same breast that I'd had a lumpectomy in two years previously.


Every time I felt it, a sense of familiarity came over me. I knew in my gut what it was. But denial is a river, and I got swept up in that river until the middle of June. I went to my GP and got a referral for an ultrasound, which couldn't take place for a week. I went and saw my radiation oncologist for my 6 monthly check up. He examined me, and requested that he be sent a copy of the report when it was done.


A day after the ultrasound I received a phone call from my GP requesting I come in to discuss the results. The radiologist had requested further testing -  core biopsy on the lump in my right breast, and a fine needle aspiration on a lump found in my left breast.


Apparently lightening can strike in the same place twice.


I wasn't able to get an appointment for these procedure for two weeks, as the radiologist had gone on holidays. The alternative was paying $500 up front to have it done at another centre. This wasn't an option. After feeding, housing, being a bloody ATM to the Narcissist, I didn't have a spare $500 to cough up, especially to confirm what I already knew to be true. So I waited.

And the loop continued.

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Shameless May

Half way through May I unceremoniously kicked out of my house the narcissistic parasite that I had allowed to attach to my heart.


Actually, it was fairly dramatic to be honest. After telling him that if he didn't have his stuff removed from my residence by 5.30pm that evening, I would start putting it out on the street. As he felt omnipotent, as narcissists do, he didn't heed my threat. Trouble was, I had reached my breaking point, and proceeded to carry out my threat.


On one trip to the gutter Nathan said to me "I feel like I'm living in an episode of Shameless." I replied, "So do I. For the last three years!" and continued putting stuff in the gutter. (Not proud of this. Just an example of how perfectly imperfect I am as well.)

 

I took a photo of what I had already put out there and sent it to him. Funnily enough, he arrived within 5 minutes of the photo being sent. Extremely intoxicated. Did I mention that he's also an alcoholic and addict? I know. Winning Vicky - I sure can pick 'em! Send your wounded, damaged, addicted souls to me.


When he arrived, he confronted Nathan, "Think you're a big man now do you?" and shoved him. My son is now taller then him, and the same size. But Nathan's a lover, not a fighter, and walked away from him.


The lioness within me had been poked into roaring, and the removal of his belongings amped up a notch. I no longer carefully placed his belongings out of my home. It took all my self control not to attack him. How dare he lay his hands on my son!! I fueled my fury into removing his stuff out of my home faster. He pushed me. I pushed back, walked away and called the police to come and supervise. To come and supervise ME, so that I didn't get pulled into his jungle of deceit and instability. I wasn't afraid of him. I was afraid of me, and what may erupt if I didn't take some control.


Over the previous several months, I had started to become increasingly aware that the thief I had given to my heart to was not who he pretended to be, and had been reading more and more about Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Naively, or arrogantly (the jury's still out on that one), I believed that I could help him see that he was unwell, and get the help he needs, and live happily ever after. Trouble is happily ever after only exists in fairy tales.


After I evicted him from my home, I thought I had successfully evicted him from my life as well. I did. For a while. About 5 weeks to be honest. I tried to get on with my life, with reestablishing some sense of order, and reclaiming of my self. Work. Kids. Self. Friends. Life. All the things that had be relegated far down the chain of attention ...easier enough to do when the person you're involved with demands your undivided attention like the succubus they are.


I was in the shower when I first felt a lump near my lumpectomy scar. It wasn't very big, and so close to the scar that I couldn't determine whether it was a lump or an extension of scar tissue. An alarm bell went off in my psyche. Which I promptly shut the fuck down. Yeah... no. Nobody got time for dealing with that shit again thank you very much...


Over the next couple of weeks I would find that my fingers had subconsciously found their way to the lump...was it real? maybe it was my rib I was feeling? no, it's part of the scar...It's nothing... I had a scan in February and it was all clear.... Over and over, as my fingers read my breast like braille, seeking the words of confirmation that it was nothing.


It's ok. I have an appointment with the radiation oncologist mid June. I'll get him to check it. It's ok.

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Here's your sunglasses people

On Saturday night I went to a 30th birthday party, with a Great Gatsby theme. I needed earrings to complete my outfit, so I dared to dive into a bag of jewellery that I have been carting around for the last four years, and adding to at each frantic move that has occurred in those four years. I found a pair, and left the bags contents strewn over the floor as the Great Gatsby awaited.




I only got back to the detritus this morning. As I was looking for earrings on Saturday night there were moments of recognition of pieces that I had been given, or made, or brought, like a rapid slide show going off in my head. I had planned to scoop all the contents up and put it back in the bag, to be shoved back in the cupboard, waiting to be carted away the next time I moved house. Except, that's not what happened. I started really looking at the pieces. And remembering...back to times when I wore whatever I wanted, and someone else's approval wasn't sort after, because I really didn't care if anyone else liked it or not. I did, and that was all that mattered.




I found myself slowing down, and sorting through the debris. Oh look, there's a set of earrings! and another! beautiful, intricate, dangling earrings... why did I stop wearing them?  And there's my toe ring!...I thought I had lost that...why did I stop wearing that as well? Broken necklaces and bracelets made from a myriad of crystals, thrown into the bag with the intention of fixing them. Why didn't I fix them?




As I sat on the floor, surrounded by little piles of earrings, broken necklaces and bracelets, and items I no longer wanted, I felt the very long languor that I have been occupying, lift. The shroud that has been over me for far too long, was cast aside. I felt AWAKE.


A beautiful woman died last night. She has been living with terminal bowel cancer for the last 3 years. Her light reached out and touched many of us. In her book Breakfast, School Run, Chemo she wrote "Don't die with your light inside you." Julia, here's to you. Thank you. I'm going to shine brighter then a mother fucking star.


Here's your sunglasses people. I'm no longer dimming my light for anyone.

Thanks Eden.

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Skin hunger

As I struggle to find a place that is comfortable to lie in, my body aches for touch.

To feel the curve of someone behind me, safe in their embrace. Their breath on my neck, the length of their body curled around mine. The weight of their presence a comfort, easy, and secure. Their warmth and energy mingling with mine.

Instead I lay within a nest of pillows, strategically placed to offer some support and comfort, and the illusion of weight. No warmth, no energy exchange, a lone tree on a deserted island, surrounded by sea.

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I had to loose my breasts

I had to loose my breasts to get the narcissist who was in my life out.

Ok, so that may be a tad dramatic.

I did have breast cancer and had to have a double mastectomy
I did have a narcissist in my life, that I was fully aware that he was one.

It wasn't until I had the mastectomy was I able to cut him completely out of my life forever and ever and ever. Just like the cancer that was in my body, the cancer that was him was cut out of my heart.

That may sound harsh. And Nasty. But remember that this is my perspective and my experience. I allowed a man, a cancer of a man, to take up residence in my heart.

I first started to research narcissistic personality disorder when I started observing and listening to the bells that were going off in my gut, about 18 months ago. Believe me. I'd ignored them for a long time. He is such a chameleon, and so good at it, it's not surprising that the bells where ignored for so long.

Even with the knowledge of who he was, with absolute certainty, I still continued to be within his presence. Like a moth to a flame.

It was my distraction. My place to run away to so I didn't have to deal with the shitful thing that was about to happen to me. I expected nothing, no promises, just the space to be in for a little while.

I'd be watching the behaviour patterns of this man for such a long time by now I knew when he withdrew, I knew that he had met someone else, I knew that he was lying to me again. I knew he would do what he inadvertently did.

What I didn't know was just how much malice and nastiness he would do it with.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hurting. My whole entire being is fucking hurting right now.

But I'm also learning a whole lot of lessons. Because through the enforced rest and recovery I'm in right now, I have no distractions, I'm listening. And learning. And becoming.

I know that I am not the loser in the ending of this relationship. I am so much the victor. Because, unlike him, I have learnt. I have listened. I take ownership of my part in this thing, whatever it was.

He never will.

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Can I have the envelope please?

And the winner is... 

image credit

So I went back to the surgeon, and saw his resident, because, well I guess he's entitled to, he was on holidays. Age and experience are vastly different between the surgeon, and his resident. Which probably accounts for his total blasé attitude while discussing the tumour they removed from my breast.

Apparently, it was 3.5cm, with a margin of 1mm to my skin, 3mm to my chest muscle, and 1cm on each other side. It was a high grade tumour, meaning it grows quickly, has both progesterone and estrogen hormone receptors attached to the cancerous cells, and has been successfully removed. Great, right?

My heart friend who was with me couldn't understand why I wasn't ecstatic at the news. I mean, I'm happy that its gone, but my gut feels uneasy. Very uneasy. Too close. Those margins...too close.

There will be a meeting in two weeks between surgeon, oncologist, and whoever else is involved in these things, to discuss my case and what they suggest happens next, and I will see them a week later. When I go, I want to be far more informed then I was the other day.

I have been researching and reading articles on Breast Cancer Network Australia, Cancer Australia, McGrath Foundation, National Breast Cancer Foundation , and have joined a support group on Facebook for Younger Women with Breast Cancer. They have been a god send.

This is MY body, and I don't want to be 6 months down the track only to have to go through this again - or worse. I want to be proactive, not reactive. Informed, not naïve. I'm intelligent woman, who isn't prepared to put blind faith in the medical profession.

I'm also a scared woman, in the midst of yet another round of trauma... god damn C-PTSD.

Sigh.

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The new price is right

I'm not good at being in limbo. In fact I suck at it. Big time.

Last Thursday I had a lumpectomy on my right breast to remove the 3.3cm tumour that was happily growing there. It was having quite a party it seems, as it is deemed high grade - meaning its been growing fast.

Tomorrow I find out if those little fuckers have remained in-situ, or have decided that the area they were rapidly multiplying in was becoming to small for them, and have punched their way through the walls of my ducts.

So, tomorrow, limbo comes to cessation, and I get to find out whether I'm going through door number 1 - The cancer cells have not punched their way through, and there is a nice clear margin around the tumour showing NO cancer cells. Once my lumpectomy has healed I will have radiation therapy for 5 days a week for 6 weeks.

Or - door number 2 - The cancer is invasive and ..... a whole lot of other more scary type shit happens.

What ever door I get presented with, at least I'm not in limbo anymore, driving myself slowly insane, and I can make a plan.

Feeling slightly like a contestant on the New Price is Right. Only I wish there was a new car, or a dream holiday behind the doors....

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Well, I didn't see THAT coming....

I have breast cancer. (DCIS)

They’re words I never thought I would type, let alone say.

My head is spinning on its axis, unable to finish a thought or question, before it has leapt onto the next one.

I’m a tad overwhelmed…. To say the least.

I’m incredibly thankful for my beautiful soul sisters. All of them. But especially Sharon. Because we have been there, done that three years ago. She is my inspiration.

As we sat in the car, and I yelled FUCK FUCK FUCK , she said to me, the words I had stoically said to her nearly three years ago - “We can do this. One step at a time.” And if I believed it then, when I said it to her, I need to believe it now, as she says it to me.

I can do this.

One step at a time.

 

 

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