Life is uncertain, it changes, it shifts; sometimes it is ripped from beneath us unexpectedly. Of course, I always knew this about life, on an intellectual level; but I didn't feel it, I didn't live it. I've been very lucky in life, I've experienced very little trauma or grief in my forty years of living. Since my cancer diagnosis though, the reality that life is uncertain is inescapable.
I have a science background and a logical, pragmatic side to my personality. Several times in this journey, I've turned to statistics in the hope of some clarity; some grasp on the situation I find myself in. I don't know what comfort I was hoping to find; there's little comfort to be found in the numbers, even when they are broadly in your favour; yet I still found myself drawn to researching survival data.
I'm currently playing a metaphorical game of Russian Roulette, there's one bullet and four empty chambers in my five year game. I'm also playing a 10 year game and a 20 year game of Russian Roulette, with even fewer safe chambers in the metaphorical gun. I've worked out my kids ages for each game, just in case I lose. I hate Russian Roulette and I don’t want to play. Part of me wishes I hadn't looked at the data; but I was already an unwillingly participant by then, my research simply told me the stats of the gun I was holding.
I would love to go back to this time last year, I had no idea I was playing such a ruthless game then; I didn't know that as a 39 year old woman, my metaphorical roulette gun had 135 empty chambers in it and 1 bullet. Nor did I know that 131 of the empty chambers would soon disappear with a cancer diagnosis. But as life goes forwards, not backwards, I find myself living my life; I’m aware of the game I’m playing, but I’m not defined by it.
I frequently get told things like, "none of us know what's around the corner" in a bid to stop me worrying. It doesn't work and I often wonder how blasé these people would feel if we traded places. Other people confidently assert that “I'm going to be fine”, as if stating it factually makes it magically become fact. I don't believe them either; no amount of wishful thinking is going to fundamentally change my prognosis. I actually find it a little insulting when people insinuate I shouldn't be scared; I personally believe fear is a perfectly reasonable emotional response to the situation I find myself in. I suspect the feeling of fear is here to stay in my life and I'm OK with that; I'm not trying to avoid the fear; I'm trying to cope with it, the only way I know how to, by facing it.
Step one in facing my fear, is to allow myself to feel it. The fear comes in waves, often on my rest days after a few days of pushing cancer out of my mind to concentrate on the day job. It also surfaces in response to conversational triggers. There are times when I need to push my fear down, but in general, my philosophy is to acknowledge it, accept it and feel it. I often cry and if there's a hug on offer, I'll take it. Sometimes the emotion directs my thinking and I start pondering the "what ifs", it can be a rabbit warren of unhelpful negative thinking and so I have to remind myself to move my thinking onto more positive things; which brings me to...
Step two in facing my fear, is to let it inspire me to pour my energy into living my best life now. There's not a lot I can do to influence how much time I have left, but I can choose how I spend it. Living my best life doesn't mean trying to cram it full of instagram worthy events and abandoning all “wasted” down time. I still have days where I eat cereal for lunch while watching Grey's Anatomy in a messy house. My best life, is a life that I enjoy living, a life with balance, a life where all the important stuff has a place now; not in some hypothetical future. As cliche as it sounds, I want to live a life without regret and striving for this gives me somewhere positive to channel my thoughts when the fear hits.
It no longer makes sense to me to work tirelessly on my career in the hope that I can fit in more leisure time in when I retire. It doesn't make sense to me to fill all the weekends with children's activities and household chores in the hope I can reconnect with my husband in ten years time, when the kids are teenagers. It doesn't make sense to me to exhaust myself doing chores just to keep up to with someone else's expectation of how I should live my life. It doesn't make sense to me, to leave my truth unspoken when I'm craving to be understood and accepted by those I love most.
My best life contains; more honesty in my relationships, more couple time, more outdoor time, less work, less guilt, more salad, more holidays, more fitness, more self care and (despite the fact that I loathe them) the occasional household chore. I try to live everyday true to my personal values, making small positive impacts with all of my choices.
I’ve made some big changes in an effort to live my best life. The biggest single change we've made, is my husband has started using his large stockpile of banked leave to take Friday's off work. Last week we spent our first "Fun Friday" discovering the beautiful Sharpness Canal at Frampton Upon Seven. We've got a degree of flexibility in our family finances; thanks to a combination of career progression, frugal choices and dash of good fortune. This means I can continue to work part time and when the banked leave runs out, Dave can reduce his hours to a four day week, should he choose to. Having one day a week set aside for couple time, is a wonderful way to celebrate life now and I can't imagine we'll ever regret that decision, even if I live to be 100.
A less dramatic, but potentially even more impactful change has been the slow and gradual shift in my thinking. I've been making a conscious effort to be more emotionally honest in my relationships. I'm getting better at articulating my feelings, recognising what I need and asking for it. I'm getting better at not feeling guilty for putting my own needs equal to the needs of others. The emotional energy I've freed up with this shift in thinking has left me feeling much more generous in my relationships. My blog is a big part of this honesty; a declaration of "this is me, take it or leave it" and an exercise in self acceptance.
I don't want to die and I really hope it doesn't happen any time soon; but I've reached a point where I love my life, I love myself and there's precious little I want to change. The fear of dying isn’t going anywhere, but I’m not sure I want it to, this fear is inspirational. I’m living my best life now, no matter how long it turns out to be, and that’s a powerful positive to take from a seemingly negative emotion.
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