the merry go round continues

a sweet and well meaning young woman of my acquaintance asked me today how my week has been. i answered 'it's been challenging' and she asked if i have someone i can download to about it.  i replied that i do.

in all honesty though, this week has been unbearable, and mostly because i feel so completely unable to express my thoughts and feelings to anyone. i have to hold everything together so damn tightly, lest it all unravel and fall to pieces. and besides that, i never get a moment alone, or a moment alone with another adult, in which it is appropriate to purge. i am either working, or surrounded by children.

my poor kids have had to contend with me as morose and uncommunicative, for days now. i go through the motions - they are fed and bathed, they have delicious and nutritious lunch boxes packed each morning, they are encouraged to practice their instruments and get on with their homework.....but that's about it. i can't summon a smile to save myself.

i am obsessively poring over research papers and online forums, looking for some elusive answer which will make everything better, or at least give me some hope.

i just KNOW she is dying. every bad CT scan is just another nail in the coffin and eventually that lid will be nailed down so tight there's no getting out.  it's only a matter of time.

i spoke to a woman recently who believes god cured her husband of degenerative motor neuron disease.  she told me we just have to have enough faith, pray hard enough, and god will cure all ills.  so, where do we agnostics go with that then???  the essential problem is that i don't believe. i don't believe she will ever be really well again.  when i first clapped eyes on that purple lump on her breast, i KNEW how this would end.  having nearly 12 months free of treatment, free of apparent disease....i don't know if that was cruel or merciful really.  it gave us a chance to heal from the trauma of surgery/diagnosis/prognosis/treatment, but more importantly, it gave us a chance to let go of the fear and apprehension.  it gave us a chance to dream again, to plan. only to have all those dreams and plans ripped away, again.

this cycle is killing me, too. it is unbearable. and yet, how can i possibly wish for it to end? because wishing for it to end is wishing for her to die, isn't it??? and how could a mother possibly wish that for her child???

so, in her remarkable self assurance and resilience, the young one in question has gone off interstate to uni this week. doing orientation for the law course she is starting anew this year. while i am here, feeling totally overwhelmed, unable to work effectively, dealing with a shit load of self loathing and grief....i just wish someone would show me how to get off this fucking ride....

i can't see blue knob for the cloud which has settled in the valley between here and there. it's a very strange sensation for my brain. my eyes are straining to see what my brain knows is there. sometimes i think i can catch a glimmer of an outline of the mountain through the cloud, but then it's gone and it seems i have just filled in what i know to be true. i wonder if this is a front, advancing, toward me. hopefully it will bring some rain with it....

it is another example of how the exterior so succinctly mirrors the interior....or is it that i have so successfully projected my inner outward? whichever....

my mind, too, is clouded, yet light still, with birdsong, whispering wind and dancing trees. but it seems i am disconnected, watching, as the front advances.  i struggle for clarity, clarity of vision, of purpose, of direction.

in my home, as i sit and write, sipping a new blend, i briefly hear a mouse, difficult to judge whether it is at my elbow or over the other side of the house.  i look for it, but it eludes me, goes quiet for a while, and then returns to disturb my flow, just when i have finally let it go....

there are mice in my mind, also. little distracting, gnawing, thoughts which dart in and out, stealing my focus, jolting me out of my brief glimpses of ease or understanding. sometimes these thoughts are smelly, putrid, and lingering, like the mouse wee i sometimes find on my clothes, or the occassional, rotting, dead things which appear in odd places in my home.

i'm drinking a herbal blend, to fortify myself for what i can see is a rough road ahead. my friend on the CSG blockade site often uses the term 'red alert' in relation to the battle they are waging against the capitalist, environmental vandals, and this time for me feels like my own, personal red alert.  i feel shaken loose from any complacency, i am confronting impermanence, i am poised to move in the direction that is placed before me. i feel totally helpless to determine that direction myself. the battle is coming to me.

i am preparing to take to the skies. to pack my bags and travel, wherever necessary, in support of my daughter and her own, personal battle against the cancer which gnaws away at her.....holding my bewildered younger daughters close, tighter for the knowledge that i may leave them behind at certain points on the road, as i ruthlessly prioritise the needs of my little family.....

so, wish me luck, comrades, as i take on this latest campaign.