Three years ago today
Three years ago today I was wishing that time would jump forwards so I could be where I am today, rather than where i was three years ago today. I was hoping that in three years, on 6th March 2013, I’d be feeling well, fit, happy and alive. I didn’t think I would be alive. I thought I’d be long gone, having died an agonising death, and not having seen my little boys grow up. Three years ago today, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and my world suddenly froze. I couldn’t envisage ever feeling like myself again, as I felt so different, so apart, so separate and so isolated, and so very far removed from the person in my head, and in my body, and in my heart who I had known so well for the last 36 years. Three years ago today, i learnt that I wasn’t invincible and that bad things could happen to me. I learnt what a panic attack feels like, I learnt a whole bunch of cancer terminology, I learnt that the medical side head tilt usually precedes bad news, and I learnt how to break my mum’s heart without even trying. Three years ago today I met an awesome surgeon who let me fall apart, hopefully saved my life and continues to gently poke fun at my ability to be terrified about the smallest thing whilst simultaneously quoting the most obscure research to prove a point. Three years ago today I realised that my life was now a before and an after, and I started to make plans in my head for my little boys’ futures if i was no longer around to care for them, and it was then, three years ago today, that I realised exactly how important my lovely husband was to me, how much I depended on him and how much I loved him. Three years ago today, I had never had chemotherapy, or seen myself with no hair, and I didn’t understand that sometimes you could be so terrified and anxious that you just couldn’t physically chew and swallow food. I didn’t yet know the best way to tell people that I’d been diagnosed with primary breast cancer, and I didn’t realise that each time you told someone new you would be forced to deal with their emotion and shock and end up reassuring them, whilst inside you were numb. Three years ago today, I stepped into a totally different world. A world of being a patient, of being ill and dependant. I stepped into a world where I was given a glimpse of what it might be like to be old, of the soul sapping reality of losing your independence and aching all over, with a time clock ticking rapidly towards your final hours. I saw the thin line between life and death, the vulnerability of the lives we build up and how they can be dashed through in a single moment. I was shown the arrogance of believing that you can plan your life and expect things to work out as you had decreed. Today, three years later, I am glad I am not still living in that day, three years ago. I am now where I wanted to be on that day. This is the three years I wanted desperately to pass, and now, three years after that day, I am grateful. I am grateful to be here and well enough to write this. I am grateful to have had a first class medical team who have looked after me. I am grateful to have a fabulous, happy and healthy family, and to have a bunch of great friends. Three years since that day, I have made new friends I have met along the way, who have become an intrinsic thread in the pattern of my daily life. But, I have also lost friends who were not as lucky as I was. And it is for those friends that I am celebrating being here today, three years after that day. When I am raising a glass of something sparkling later today, I will remember all those ladies who didn’t get to mark their ‘three years ago today’ moments, and I will try to live each day well, using the lessons learnt from that day, three years ago today. But, I will do my best to live those moments in the vibrancy of this day, three years later, rather than in the shadow of that day, which is in the past, where it belongs, three years ago today.
! xx
super squishy hugs to you.