I've Been Away

 

 

I've Been Away

I've been away from my blog and from my writing.

I am here now, yet I am not here--not fully.

My body feels like an alien creature, weary, uncooperative, aching from radiation burns.  It has turned on me, betrayed me with these cancer cells.  Still this body is mine.  I recognize myself in the mirror; my face, my fingers, my feet, my self.

Yet I am not here--not quite.  I struggle through the brain fog.  Is it Friday?  What happened to Thursday?  Will I write today?  Can I make sense?  Will I write and re-write only to quit in despair?

Depression and I have become well acquainted, more so on the days when pain and frustration are close companions.  I sleep 11 hours a night and nap during the day.  If I want to do dishes, or bake biscuits, sweep a floor or have a shower, I must do this in the morning before the energy dissipates.

It has been hard learning to be gentle and patient with myself.  Even though treatments ended last Wednesday, it will be weeks more before energy returns and the burns are healed.  I am recovering but want the process to speed up, to be done.  I want to be well...now, now, now.

This winter, I have been hibernating in the caverns of radiotherapy and sleep, caught in a haze of  depression and pain and medications.  But I am returning to myself, to clarity, to lucidity, to balance.  The "not here" times lessen as the "here" times lengthen.

I will be well again.

I am nearly there, back to "here", back to being fully present within myself.


Words and photo are copyright Carol Steel.  The photo is of the recent full moon through a haze of cloud and darkness.