I have written a guest blog post for Lucy Turns Pages! It’s all about how writing has helped with my mental health in relation to cancer survivorship. Please take a look and let me know if it strikes a chord! You can find it here: “Writing About Mental Health and Cancer Survivorship”.
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Note to self: There is a difference between seeing a health problem as something external that is threatening your body, and seeing your body as itself as the problem. Your body is not a threat. The illness/problem is a threat. Your body is on your side.
Hospital appointment on Wednesday – first of three different ones but I’m still waiting for the others to come through. I’ve been feeling quite content and at peace today and yesterday, considering, but I’m feeling a tiny bit anxious this evening. Which is illogical, because nothing has changed between then and now. Goodness knows how I will feel when I wake up in the morning. Some days I wake up feeling worried and other days I wake up feeling chirpy, and there is no discernable reason for either. It’s a lottery. I’m held hostage by my feelings. I know the Buddhist answer is to watch them come and go without attachment. I guess I could try harder at that.
I’m excited to have three poems accepted for online zine In Between Hangovers. One is already up on the website, and two others are forthcoming! This poem, “Superheroes”, is one I wrote for another publication but it got rejected. I was going to put it on my website but decided that I really liked it and maybe someone else would like it enough to publish it, too. I’m glad I put it back out into the wild! Here it is – Superheroes at In Between Hangovers.
your body doesn’t care
that it’s nearly Christmas
your body doesn’t care
about your birthday
your body will betray you
without checking the calendar
don’t refer me to a surgeon,
refer me to a good friend.
give me a letter urging me
to go to the pub immediately.
don’t refer me to the hospital,
refer me to jack daniels.
after all, he is a specialist
in these things.
don’t refer me to a doctor
refer me to my boyfriend
send me home to do nothing
just refer me back to bed.
I did a free write and this is what came out.
Everything starts with I. It’s like there is nothing else to talk about but myself and the wind, the storm, the loss. So much loss. I don’t think I even care about when it will end or why, just that one day there will
be peace and there will be sunshine. There is no stopping it. I know that now there is nothing except the wind in my face and its strength is determined by some unknown weatherman who decides these things. Who decides these things? Not me, that’s for sure. There is a breeze or there is a gale or there is something between the two but there is no rest for the wind now, there is no rest for the wind. Sometimes I think that there is fire and the wind will spread it. The
wind will turn the flames bluer than they have ever been. And there will be snow. And there will be gusts, so much of a gust, and no guts, no guts left for me. Nothing left of me. Windswept, scooped up and carried away on a tail, on a sheet, in a sack, something taken in broad daylight – not in the dead of night.
In the space of two weeks, I have:
– Been to see a gynaecologist due to weird MRI results, and told everything is fine, that they can give me a hysteroscopy if I want (just a camera check-up thing) but I said if it’s not totes necessary, don’t bother
the fog contains all the
bad thoughts, all the
worst possible outcomes,
all the harshest parts of reality
and descends
familiar lands turned foreign
even time is warped –
the turn of the day barely signalled.
the fog isn’t malleable
you can’t make anything
out of it except things that
are beautiful in an ugly way
and even then it’s a
matter of opinion.
one day it will lift
but the end is
impossible to see
because the fog
doesn’t simply shroud –
it steals, with no promise
of replacement.
