link 1
link 2
link 3
Upsaid

Please God Don't
sign my Guestbook
View :: Sign

I pity the 1190485 fools who hit here.

Rummage through my entry

View archived entries

Post a new entry

wot i read, when its raining

These blogs just don't do RSS:

Gravity Zero

Panachetta
Creepy Lesbo

Friends' businesses - wow!

Fantastic boutique hotel in Brighton!
Pay for expert advice in writing your thesis / dissertation

del.icio.us

Vanessa's bookshelf: currently-reading



More of Vanessa's books »

On how it is going for me

Living alone is lovely. After years and years spent in spare rooms or cupboards separated from the office by a sheet of MDF, I marvel daily at how many rooms there are, and all for me.

I internet-dated (scary) someone really nice. I am usually all about the bad boys, and it is shocking and humbling to be treated well. I suddenly realise what louses I have spent years chasing after. Why?

I've pretty much managed to lose, very oh so slowly, three dress sizes of weight since I finished treatment last August. It's one short of what's needed in order to be able to wear my old clothes (which will save large amounts of money that I have sore need of currently), but it's still pretty good. Losing weight is famously made more difficult after the surgery I had, so this is pretty much an affirmation of self belief, that I've managed to keep to it. Hopefully without becoming a total diet bore.

I increased my hours at work a little bit. And eased up on my impossible expectations of myself. Largely due to having encountered my first truly sympathetic medical professional. The first to actually listen to all that had happened to me, to my body, ever, rather than simply zeroing in on a body part and ignoring the rest. She told me I am marvellous. I have decided to believe her.

The insomnia stopped just before Christmas. The same medic found me some magic potions that would reduce a lot of annoying, life destroying side effects long term. They would just get more difficult for a little while first. So I spent christmas sleeping 14 hours a day and having to concentrate and focus reeeeeeeeally hard to understand anything anyone said to me. Miraculously, nobody really noticed. Although, as a friend remarked, people are going to be surprised when the old irrepressible talkative me resurfaces, clutching and heaving.

I am learning to survive on food that only a microwave can produce. I even managed to brown some beef heart anticuchos the other week. This, too, takes forethought and focus.

I feel a bit of a fraud, having taken the decision to stop telling people about why I'm such a fuckup and so tired all the time these days. That identity, the cancer sufferer has morphed into the cancer survivor, and now it needs to morph again, into just person. This does not define me. However, it feels like lying by omission to not mention such massive influences on my life. We shall see if I manage this one. I'm not one of life's secret keepers. (are any bloggers ever?)

It's really nice to live somewhere large and quiet and warm, to sleep a full night through without stressing out, to have a doc who listens to you and tries to help, and to have company that seems to care about you.

This year does not seem to be trying to kill me.

Touch wood.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 12:30 pm ~ There are shitloads - 6 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]

2012 roundup

It's been a whole 20 hours of 2012, and although my usual tradition is to blog the new year in at midnight, this year I moved to my new place, which is medievally unwired and unconnected to any media sources that did not exist prior to 1945. Anyway, blogging the newness is more positive than recriminations and dwelling on the oldness of the year gone past (the year that tried to kill me, I believe I called it, in last year's NYE post).
I bought a washing machine. I found a leak. I tried out a new toaster. I cooked goat milk in a microwave. I slept long and deep. I went home to my mum's for tea. These are all things that have happened so far in 2012.

Good year so far.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 3:46 pm ~ There are shitloads - 3 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]

the good struggles to outweigh the bad, but in the end we triumph

I don't know why british versions of christmas end up being so stressful, but they do. Working with kids, I get to see the knock on effects of families who have been uber stressed at the shops all weekends, and have as a result been inexplicably grumpy to their kids all month. Of course, Papa Noel brings the presents, so the munchkins don't know why the older generation all suddenly have no energy left to tolerate their bounciness, and put it down to the impenetrable horribleness of growing up. Or their own fault.
Anyway, it's a stressful time of year.

Adding to the stress:
1. Couldn't manage more than an hour in my house before feeling too ill to continue, because the heating and water were still off.
2. I seem to be an empathy magnet at the moment. Come tell me your tales of woe, ye weak, damaged and oppressed. I am the go-to woman for listening to major life traumas at the moment.
Which makes me wilt, slightly, especially the days when I get carnage and abuse before breakfast.
3. Can you do 230 reports for me. Now? While simultaneously holding a presentation? I know in the real world that's impossible, but in management mind, that's your fault, not mine.
4. Accumulated counselling is revealing what an imperfect, flawed, hopeless human being I am.
5. No time to myself. I'm still operating on limited energy (hell, the doc says my insides are still melting), so this is more of a biggie than it sounds. When needed to be the reliable person in the picture, it had me squealing mental feedback as I tried to get through the day without accidentally driving into a wall or anything.
6. I can't sleep. "can't sleep, mind racing! can't sleep, mind racing! can't sleep, mind..." You get the picture. Now add stinking flu.

Relieving the stress:
1. The loo now works, the water now works, the heating now works, the windows now work. I have put up one pair of curtains in one room, and cleaned the poo off of the floor and walls of one room. Operation Clean Up the Poo Is Go. But slowly. See 5 above.
2. Nearly there. Time does march on, and give people 3 days in front of the tv and they forget their stupid deadline. I haven't seen any other countries shut down quite the way the UK does at Christmas, and this can be pretty much guaranteed to cure the gigantic case of the Mondays this entire country has collectively had for the last month.
3. Decree absolute arrived, I cried, I'm getting through that now. Moving on. Next, please.
4. A day in one's pyjamas can still solve many of life's problems.
5. My gym schedule and my saintly diet were interrupted by the scale of stresses, but I know they will resume. This means I have built a resilient habit, and this is a really big thing. Next job is to build it into the times of day I'm not actually expected to be at work instead.
6. Although life feels as if it is totally out of control, I still manage to get something off my massive to-do list every two days.
7. I may have been offered a cooker and a freezer and two wardrobes. These are key objects which enable me to live like a human, not an animal in a cave, in new house.
8. Got the number of a plasterer, looking for someone to rip up floorboards. There's a certain freedom from responsibility in being physically unable to do these jobs myself.
9. It is nearly New Year. Last New Year I was alone, exhausted, bleeding horrifically, panicking and wondering whether to call 999 yet. This New Year cannot possibly be worse. It cannot. Touch all sorts of things, it just cannot.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 1:03 pm ~ There are shitloads - 4 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]

In which we end a practically suicidally sad week with some good news

It seems odd that a hidden bathroom leak that brought my ceiling down and sprayed liquid poo over everything in my new living room should have cheered me up, but it was that sort of a week. I'd just about run out of shoulders to weep upon, and the universe provided me with a appropriate illustration of how I was feeling, which cheered me up no end. Have spent a day or two cleaning poo from walls, and waiting for kaka to dry on the floorboards, and thinking of all the upsides.

1. It didn't land on my head.
2. It didn't land on the sofa that I've been threatening to sue people for not delivering.
3. It's done now and can't re-happen.
4. I finally worked out where the pipe full of poo is.
5. It happened in the only bit of that room I'd cleaned - which meant everything precious had already been moved away.
6. Family cleared the worst of it away before I got there.
7. It matches the ripped apart wall beneath, now.
8. No newly-fixed electrics came down.
9a. My plumber has just [tomorrow] started his own business, and is delighted at his first job. He made me run outside and admire the lettering on his new van before seeing to the poo-covered wreckage. We like enthusiasm.
9b. It is diluted poo. Not purest poo. Yay!
10. I have insurance. Which is really really bizarre, I am not usually the insurance type.

Of course, later on, I found I'd left the patio doors unlocked for the past month, and the new kitchen window open for a week now, so why have I been so worried about security that I spent all my savings on new windows?
I guess I have prioritised security and lockable walls over mending walls that have rubble falling from them, I don't know why. But if I had done anything prettyfying, it would have been destroyed in a deluge of molten poo this week, so for once, I applaud my own decisions.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 5:13 pm ~ There are shitloads - 4 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]

The Recurrence of The Grey

This week I've been sick again. When I overdo it, I feel grey. Grey like an acid hangover, with a pounding head like the onset of flu. Just without sneezing. If I don't get a lot of sleep, it will last about 3 weeks, making things harder and harder until even walking becomes a problem.
It's vitally important that I never push myself to the point that I trigger the Grey Response.

As my recovery also utterly depends on my pushing myself, systematically and slowly, to regain strength, stamina, flexibility and mental acuity, this is going to be a constant year long circle of try -- defeat -- hurt -- try -- defeat -- hurt.

I believe stepping up the exercise, last Sunday, was the tipping point, though the culprit is three weeks of working 8 hours a week. (not counting the extra hours I can't resist putting in). Net result, I couldn't do any exercise at all this week, till Saturday, when a church organ interrupted tai chi, and triggered the perma-pounding head and noise sensitivity that accompanies The Grey.

Reasons this week was never going to be good:
-I have whined and complained a lot this week.
-I took sleeping pills for 7 days. I could see they took my mood down a notch immediately, but I thought perhaps it would stabilise. They sometimes made me sleep more, sometimes not, but they always made me feel miserable, and negative. It's hard to be glass half full anyway when you're recovering from any life threatening illness, but I am normally relatively Pollyannaish. These pills took that away from me, and I spent a lot of time trying really hard not to cry, for fairly small fry reasons (like losing my way in an unfamiliar building when it still hurts to walk). The pills are over, now. I don't think emotional stability is that easily won that I can afford to throw it away for mere sleep.
-It's startling how much of a failure I felt at having to call in sick. Even though, on a phased return to work, I am technically always sick.
-Having ditched two forms of therapy, I began a fourth - a group therapy for coping with divorce. The last two years have been momentous in many ways, and I need to deal with them a little at a time. I was not married for a long time (a factor that makes me feel even more like a failure), and as it happened overseas, people tend to expect me to be 'over it' by now. I don't feel even a shred of 'over it'. I feel like I survived a shipwreck of Titanic proportions, but that I only lived by shoving F out of the boat. The sense of guilt and failure is enormous. So I might really have predicted that this week would be tough and emotional. I wasn't really prepared for how disturbing it would be.
-Someone in my family is up for more surgery soon, the last one to get rid of the cancer that was diagnosed the day I finished treatment. It makes everything tense, and renders normal communication utterly impossible.
-While some blokes ripped out all the windows in the new place, I had to house sit them. 8 hours of freezing temperatures while cowering under a sleeping bag in front of a convector heater just about did for me.

Decent Things that happened this week, despite all of that:
-I persisted wrangling with energy companies, and finally got a good deal out of them, that the previous 3 hours of phone calls hadn't mentioned possible.
-I got new windows put in. It's quieter, a little warmer, and a lot more secure - you can't enter the house simply by pushing a window with no inner catches on it open, now. It's a high crime area, so security isn't a huge concern (I've always found villains tend to rob outside of their own patch), but 16 years of living in London has made me hyper aware of security.
-I practised cooking with just a microwave. So far I have exploded porridge twice, alchemised porridge into a cement like solid substance once, similarly alchemised an entire potato into a lump of fibrous cardboard, and cooked one successful potato. Tomorrow morning I will check up on a slow-cooker cooked pumpkin soup. Still, the kettle works.
-I was given a fridge. It smells of years old baked beans.
-I went out for a meal with colleagues. And wasn't tongue tied. I wasn't loquacious, but previous social occasions of any sort have been exceptionally difficult, as the social part of my brain appears to have been nuked along with the cancer.
-The last heater is now fixed, and I can put away the tupperware that caught the water spurting out of it for the past weeks. My new place can be heated. If I could afford to do it, it is now technically possible.
-I argued my case with medics and finally, after NINE months of putting my case, got one step closer to a bone density scan. On christmas eve. Lovely!

In short, this week I overdid it, yet again, and feel grim. But this is to be expected. It's a setback, not a defeat.

Next week I need to do a training course, continue the emotionally draining group therapy, get a flu jab (for free!), start therapy number five, and meet my new boss, the one with the power to remove my salary on the basis that I don't actually do any work. Wild times.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 7:24 pm ~ There are shitloads - 2 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]

Problematic

I have numerous problems. I know, I know, I'll try not to go on and on.

List of tawdry problems:
I don't know anyone here. I just divorced (nearly). I have to be a fitness freak for the next ten years, which cancels out about 2 hours daily. I just moved house, and my house is empty - literally empty. No fridge, no cooker, no chairs, no bed, no walls in some sections. And with a big sprawling garden for this non gardener to handle. I really really miss having someone to cuddle, hug, love, etc. Recovery means I'm tired all the time, find mentally stimulating stuff challenging, need to practise memory recall, and speaking to people is more difficult than it used to be.

Thanks to recovery taking approx 1.5 years longer than I've so far given it, all efforts to rectify these problems will always be slower than I want them to be.

This week I stepped up on several fronts:
1. Did some DIY (I *loathe* DIY).
2. Added a more challenging workout to my exercise routine.
3. Asked people to donate household stuff to me (and received a bed! How cool is that?)
4. Did a second week of work (just 12 hours a week, but still seems to take me 100 hours to execute and prepare).
5. Managed to see off two therapists until further notice, and deliberately slowed down the cycle of a third to precipitate finishing it by Easter.
6. Met my goal of managing to eat lunch every day. Seriously, I needed it to be a Big Three goal, with daily pep talk emails from a friend just to get it done. That's a bit rubbish, really.
7. Maintained a few of the more difficult social activities I've committed to, despite them being a bit shit really, of late.
8. Somebody asked if I'd set up an anglo-spanish group. I said no, but then asked my spanish tutor to set one up instead. DE-FLECT win!
9. Reading Group is lovely. Lots of kind, enthusiastic literary types just want to tell you how inspired they feel. How can that be in any way bad?
10. My plan to offset petrol wasted getting to a gym in a field in the middle of nowhere against energy savings made by having lovely long hot showers continues apace.

But I also buggered up on others:
1. I gave up on dieting. [I know, dieting seems like it probably shouldn't be a priority right now, but it's one of the health goals. Being a decent maintainable weight will ward off recurrence, and enable me to not have to buy yet more new clothes.] It worked okay except for a sudden addiction to chocolate for temporary energy emerging. This resulted in the following exchange:
--What has worked for you this week?
--I think I've done very well in all respects, except for pigging out wildly on chocolate. Really, chocolate bars on my cereal was step too far.
2. I still spend 4 hours unpaid overtime ringing clients every week. In fact, I pretty much work over my set 12 hours every day. I only go home when someone reminds me I'll make myself ill. This is just stupidness.
3. Lack of sleep became endemic, and I resorted to using sleeping pills twice. This is the first time ever that I've done that, and I don't want it to be a habit - specially not after reading about carcinogenic side effects. Nice recommendation, Mr GP!
4. I still don't even know the names of people I do exercise and social commitments with. Really, how's it gonna change if that's the case. To be fair, remembering names is pretty hard at the moment (and I just had 200 to learn at work) - but in most cases, it's largely because I haven't even asked.
5. Film Soc's movie made me cry. Of Gods and Men. The Swan Lake scene is throat lumper.
6. Phil Soc's talk was rubbish. That is, the talk was fine, interesting, even. But the nitpicking and sniping during the debate was meaningless and depressing.
7. I can't make my extra charla with JuanJe on Wednesdays. It's just impossible for me to be focused enough to get from work to school that fast.
8. Nobody turned up to fix my windows. Where are my windows, WindowGuy?
9. My radiator's still leaking. Plumber's 'I'm stumped' response not impressive.
10. I didn't ring the f***ing energy companies. Of all the things the UK made complicated in my absence, paying for gas, electricity and mobile phones top the scale.
11. I went to an 'inspirational talk' in my professional field, and came away thinking, 'I knew all that. And I've heard it presented better, too.' That makes me a shrivelled old hag, the likes of whom I used to hate working alongside. Luckily I managed to keep this bitter reaction to mysel.... oh.

Moaning aside, if you can solve any of my problems, I do actually listen to advice. I very much appreciated it on last week's post.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 11:48 am ~ There are shitloads - 7 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]

oops

Sometimes it seems like every step I take is an error.

Wondering how to eliminate regret from the canon of things one feels in the spaces inbetween.

Wondering if simply wondering about it is self-sabotage.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 5:13 am ~ Nobody Likes Us and We Don't Care [ Add ]

incommunicado (2bon2b? titq)

On the reasons to stay in contact side:
I've been the person denied a voice when the relationship ends, before, and it isn't nice. I'd like to manage to maintain contact with one or two exes.
When you split up with someone you lose your best friend, your confidante, your cuddle monkey. That pain lasts even longer than the loss and grief of less love.
I met so many foreigners who wanted a cheap deal and a new best friend while in the third world, who then just dropped the poverty stricken locals as soon as they didn't need their unpaid tour guide services any more. I don't want to be the person who loses contact when someone is not useful any more.
It's the decent thing to do.
I still feel very strongly about him.

On the reasons to cut off contact side:
Every good interaction is eventually followed by a sharply negative interaction of breathtaking, mesmerising brutal indifference.
I don't want to hear about his girlfriends, I don't want to see their happy photos together, and I don't want to discover his fake email accounts then have to resist the temptation to look at them. If I can't trust someone, I can't trust them, I don't need to go hunting for reasons to feel worse about it.
How long does it take for you to learn that communication with him leads to punishment?
He sends threats and signs off 'yours sincerely'. I can get shitty letters from the gas board, I don't need them in a second language.
I don't want him to be a part of my life here. Whatever my life here will be, it's not his to destroy.
Casual indifference when I am in life or death medical situations is hurtful enough from vague UK friends, it's actually wounding from your ex.
It can be misinterpreted, and that would be unfair and illusory. I'm not offering anything at all.
Any feelings of friendship I might generate from the odd interaction are false, and just a signal that the game is starting over.
When your dog gets out of the yard, but you get it back, you don't suddenly treat it better. You just build a bigger fence.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 6:37 pm ~ There are shitloads - 5 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]

Stability: it's been awhile.

Difficult as life is on reduced energy (and with occasional, light side effects of a character nasty enough to be too humiliating to air in polite society), it could be far worse. I find, in a very slow way - a frustratingly slow way, I'm beginning to build some things again.



This week I found somewhere to live (the big project). I don't have heating or anything to cook on, or a fridge, but it does have four walls and a door, and friendly fellow residents.

It's been awhile.

In 03 I put my stuff into storage, put my flat in London up for sale, and rented a place elsewhere in London.
In 05 I sold that flat, packed up the rented flat, managed to get back the stuff my stupid ex had stolen from the storage lock-up, collected all the belongings from the 3 variant places and stuffed them into boxes in my parents' garage, jacked in my job, and took off on the proceeds.
In 05 and 06 I lived anywhere, with what I had on my back, till I washed up in Amazonas and decided to stay.
In 07 I married in South America, told my sister to make use of the furniture in storage in the rainy garage, on loan, and set up a more permanent home in Peru.
In 10 I returned to the UK, and lived in a spare room at my parents while I looked for a job and tried to get through a languages degree online.
In 11 I divorced and got cancer, wiping out the year. And the putative futures I had built. I mostly stayed in a spare room and read long long epic novels till it was over.

The first lot of boxes I've opened are from a mid level migration, the newspapers wrapped around things are labelled 2006. (I came back in June, ligged in spare rooms, tried to reorganise the paperwork). I haven't gotten down to the layer packed in 2003 yet. That's 10 years of boxed up memories. I'm not looking forward to it.
In that time, I married and divorced. One of my best friends died. I became an aunty. I survived cancer. I got through hordes of difficult stuff, and did it okay. I can safely say I have done the best I was able to do at this. But a lot of the memories have sharp edges.

Fortunately, a lot of it is beyond my reach. My furniture is too far away, and I'm too incapable of carrying it even if I had transport. The clothes - all of them! - have apparently just disappeared. I'm too scared to ask about books. Things are still scattered all over the place.

The boxes that are here are stratified by age. The first lot of boxes were all cocktail shakers and gin. I appear to have been quite obsessed with jewellery and the knick knacks required of a very strong coffee habit.
I'm mid way, now, and a cooking theme is emerging, that and high heeled shoes. Seems I had a fear of cockroaches at one point. And a liking for huge knives.

I feel pretty disconnected from the gin sipping shoe wearing le creuset cooking lady in necklaces who put all that stuff in there. The boots make me wish R were still alive. The crockpot will come in handy in a house with no cooker.

I wonder if I'll find any of me - the new me - the one who was left when all this stuff was taken away - I wonder if 'me' is in those boxes? Or just a bunch of worry and fear that I might as well burn with the ripped up floorboards?

Next week: I go back to work, having done nothing since February. Ooer.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 12:25 pm ~ There are shitloads - 2 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]

What I see before me

I'm hunched over the flatpack desk with my jeans undone (owwwwwwwww. Walking hurts), and a big chunky jumper over my shoulders, over the cheap as chips summer top that presents my round polka dotted belly as if I were the veteran of a million billion pints of beer, or the pre-owner of a baby, neither of which are true.
To my right is a book explaining some lovely poems in a particularly clunky awkward manner, a catalogue of dull brown outfits for tall people (british shops do not make clothes for people my height), and a fireplace catalogue that I didn't even pretend to read in the shop, I'm so broke.

To my left is a desk tidy with pens colour coded into different sections. In a room this tangled and uncontrolled, it's an odd detail. Also, the money off vouchers from a loyalty card from Boots. After spending a ton there in a year of post counselling traumatic moments, I decided to buy a loyalty card, as if that will make my future penury somehow reach back into the past and claw some pennies out of time. A food diary, as I try to shed weight gained during radiotherapy (a process that's proving frustrating, as for once in my life I'm doing too much regular exercise, and gaining heavy muscle that shows up on the scales as fat. My stomach is swollen. It will be for two years. It's different from fat.) The remainder of some notebooks from a creative writing course I gave up half way through treatment. An air purifier that was meant to stop me sneezing from hayfever and rupturing my superglued abdomen open again.

There are notes and post its everywhere. A photo pinned up of a house I liked, but didn't manage to secure a place in. A photo of a friend's baby, in New Zealand. A clipping of warm up stretches I found useful. A medal for maths, not really earned, but given. A small red bell that I know once had meaning. My memory works inefficiently these days, I haven't a clue right now, but I know I will be able to access it again one day. A clay resin ninja nun. A list of gym classes coloured in according to preference, and a list of film society screenings, annotated with my preferences. An out of date calendar from Amazonas, showing April. St Francis of Assissi, picked up when I was studying in Santiago de Compostela last year, and worried that I was getting so tired I was hearing voices. A revision schedule for a qualification I didn't eventually do.

A post it reminds me to go to St Mark's Church this weekend. I went there, and I largely sat in the car park wondering at myself. I used to live there, around 22 years back, see. But I can't recall it. Not out of memory loss; out of not bothering to explore properly. I lived with this tower, these graveyards, these twisting dark forest paths, and somehow I never climbed the steps, never walked more than one route through the graveyard, and never rootled around these outbuildings. Didn't even notice the huge stone cottage at the end of the lawn. I marvel at my former self when I see it, and realise I just didn't look at stuff, didn't go further than I thought people expected. How can I have lived here and not climbed into every corner and seen what there was to see?

I wonder if today I am similarly blind.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 4:22 pm ~ Love Letters Straight from One Heart [ View ~ Add ]

Autumn in England

One of the things I missed most about England was Bonfire Night.
Last year, nobody wanted to go to a bonfire with me, and tell the truth, I didn't have a lot of energy to convince them. This year, I was invited to one a good way off, but worried too much about getting there and back, and recovering from the effort needed to make that journey. I'm stingy with my output now. I don't want to blow a whole day's energy on just getting to the party.
Autumn's been creeping in, under cover of late heatwaves and shiny days. The air in the shadows is colder, sunset creeps earlier, and now the ambient temperature drops sharply around 5pm. Tonight is the first night I smell woodsmoke in the air. I guess smells like that can be my bonfire night. Sounds of kids setting off sneaky rockets in the alleys. Dark coming earlier, cold gripping everyone tighter.

My project reached fruition; I found somewhere to live. My stuff is still in the boxes I packed in 2002, probably with a few extra mice, spiders and damp in them. I can't remember what my stuff is, what I put in there, so if you were thinking of a housewarming present: don't.

I feel strangely unexcited about a place to live. I mean, yeah, unpack the damn boxes. Reclaim the nearly new set of furniture - half a house worth - from where it found its way to, a couple of hundred miles away.
Privacy. Room to spread out. I have a lot of work to do on the place I'll be, let alone cleaning (which is impossible; I lack the mental or physical fuel; it will take me weeks), or moving (which is also impossible; it will take me months) or making the place fit for human habitation (if I can handle roughing it for a year, it will take me a fortnight).
It should be a challenge, something good. It will be, one day.

Right now it's autumn in England, though, and I am settling down into stability, but F isn't here, and a lot of it feels wrong because of that.
It'll pass.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 3:45 pm ~ Nobody Likes Us and We Don't Care [ Add ]

On the lack of recent updates

I'm really sorry I haven't been writing here in the last two months. It's for a few reasons:

1) Recovery is both tiring and confusing. To get to where I want to be, I need to dedicate all my spare energy to physio, or to organising myself. If there's something I'm not doing, it's because there's nothing left in the tin to do it with.

2) I have two projects on the boil, which I've been aiming at for over a year now - and neither of which I'm at liberty to speak about publicly, for fear of negative consequences should information reach the wrong ears, early. Also, I'm superstitious, I fear the Hex. I need to be completely sure of legality before I can blab on.

3) I don't want to go on and on and on about cancer. That's over. It's still a huge part of my day, but I'm circumscribing its influence as much as I possibly can (while also trying to leverage social media to publicise support groups, the need for a new charity, and fundraise, that is). This space here at upsaid is for me, not for cancer. I want other topics of conversation.

4) When I do have energy enough to write anything, it's because I haven't done anything. If I do anything, then there's no energy to say so. I can't be faffed with minutiae.



All these restrictions will change, but in their own good time. At the moment, I'm having to relearn a little patience. And that's what's reflected here, in this gaping silence, too.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 6:38 pm ~ There are shitloads - 2 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]

Five Things

1. The treatment cycles finished the day before my birthday, at the end of July.

2. From that point, it's just a matter of rest, recuperate, get stronger. Teach self to walk (again!), teach self to stand, sit, run, be able to get through life. Currently at: able to walk 30 minutes, able to sit 2 hours. It's improving (that it is improving is something I do not underestimate), just not as fast as I want it to. I want it to improve so fast that I can return to work in September. This is wildly overoptimistic, but - hey - I haven't been allowed to be an optimist for a good long while.

3. The first day without {the relativistic particle focused beam of death} was the day a close member of my family was diagnosed with cancer, also. This journey isn't over, I get to see it from all sides. I think if one is going to get cancer, getting it the day after having given someone 28 lifts to the hospital is probably a good time. Favours can be called in, without guilt or worry.

4. So I really need to focus on getting stronger. Then getting back to work. Then finding somewhere to live. Then putting myself out there and making some friends within 75 miles of here.

5. Next Thursday, my divorce goes to court.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 3:19 pm ~ There are shitloads - 6 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]

Five Questions you Need to Ask to Avoid Ruining Your Life

(summary of a longer, better article)



How do you know if you're in an unhealthy relationship?
Test: Is your love of this person based on some conditions you are hoping they'll fulfill later? Do you find yourself thinking, "I love him when he's not drinking" or "She'll be hot after she loses 50 pounds?" It never works.

How do you know if you've picked the right career?
A "career" is not in fact just a job that you stay at a long time, but could (and even should) involve something you actually care about doing. If you actually get excited when you talk about what you do in conversation, you have a career.

How do you know if you're ready to have kids?
If you're worried that you're not yet ready, then you're not ready. If you're worried that you'll mess the kid up, then you are in fact ready. Anyone who can look at a situation from the kid's point of view is ready.

How do you know if you're an alcoholic?
Does the thought of a full weekend without alcohol scare you a little? Then you're an alcoholic. You can wake up to it now, or perhaps 15 years later.

How do you know when you've become an adult?
When you stop depending on other people, and become the person other people can depend on.

Source: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-questions-you-need-to-ask-to-avoid-ruining-your-life/

Posted by Sarsparilla at 3:13 pm ~ There are shitloads - 3 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]

5 Things

1. Nervous. Two thirds of the way through, now, (in terms of hurdles to overcome, treatment courses to complete) and will be finished by 22nd July. Next cycle begins about 30 hours from now. Always the weak point in the chain, the waiting.

2. I really wanted this place not to be subsumed by the fact of cancer, to be able to continue writing any old shite about any old thing, as a respite. In retrospect, that was naive. Everything is consumed by the cancer, there is literally nothing left of you but those parts which survived it. So my only alternative is not to post it at all, whenever I can. This month has been brought to you by my consistent efforts not to blog any of it.

3. Waking is always the harder part, as every day since the beginning of this (which seems now the beginning of my life, everything before rendered pallid and half remembered), the mind slowly wakes, slowly remembers, slowly reminds the self: 'and you have cancer; today's gonna hurt a bit'. But the body is braver than the mind. I got over the rather extended part where every moment capable of independent thought was wasted in wanting to die. I got over the part where knowing what I was doing was harmful caused dangerous panics while under a 60 gray particle accelerator that shouldn't hit anything but the target tattooed on this too, too sullied flesh.



4. Each new cycle contains the knowledge that the worst hasn't happened yet, contains the reassurance that you survived the last (usually without knowing how the hell you got through it), and contains the surety that things are headed downhill, you just don't yet know how far. The day before a new treatment cycle you look in the mirror knowing that this is the best it will ever be.

5. Self pity is not an option in this process - hell, I wish it were. No matter what the side effects wreak upon you, there's the incessant reminders that it's capable of worse. You drool for 20 hours, jaws numbed, and your preconditioned disaster radar translates it, great; drooled but didn't throw up. Your guts pain you too much to stand upright, the same disaster radar reminds you that at least your legs still work, if they can be accessed. It used to be pollyanna-ish. Now it's simple recitation of facts, trying to place yourself in a spectrum of predicted damage and harm, trying to find a balance, something you can point to and say, this is how it will be from herein, like tonguing a broken tooth gently. The changes wrought are permanent. This really is, always, the best it will ever be. Something in me wonders if that isn't part terrible, part beautiful, part a relief.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 8:21 pm ~ There are shitloads - 3 - of notes [ View ~ Add ]