I think looking back, a lot of issues didn’t come up at first because we were just grimly getting everything together. It was like you were organized because you had to be, there was nothing else to do, you just did what the doctors told you, step by step, information by information. You were hanging on to just surviving from one moment to the next, one day to the next.
And then later on, doubt and fear and all these other walls crept in and you wound up getting consumed by them. The anger and the sadness and you were just drowning in it. There was no point or meaning to each day, to actions, there was a dis-reality to any forward thinking or planning. This took away the ability, the motivation or confidence to function.
It has always been overwhelming, it continues to be overwhelming. But there are some things that are important, even though I can’t really make sense of it now.
First, it is ok not to be able to make sense of things. It is okay to let things go. It is important to let things go. It is important to be able to let go of a bad day as just a bad day. Some of it is physical, in this extended daylight week I am more able to do things and think clearly.
Second, it is ok to feel dis-reality to forward thinking or doing things for the future. It is ok for that to feel weird. It is also ok to hope, things may seem like 95% uncertainty and 5% possibility, as opposed to most young people’s 95% possibility and 5% uncertainty but you can change the fractions of that expectation. It doesn’t have to be 95% uncertainty.
Third, living in the moment. Enjoy moments, whether it is a shower, a swim, or driving somewhere, or reading, or spending time with someone. Things that are different or that take you out of your current preoccupation. Choose to live. It is a choice. You have to choose to. Life is about enjoying it. That is the point.
Fourth, it is ok to worry. But worrying will bring misery to the current moment and it will not necessarily prevent or solve anything. The brain does become paralyzed between should-haves and what-ifs.
Five, it is important to be positive. I drove to Shenn’s house today by myself. Liping came to have lunch with me today. They helped me pass the day really fast and in moments I enjoyed. I was tired and fell asleep easily and slept decently at night. I do wake up with thoughts, aches in my legs and a hot and sweaty head, but I am not hunched over, in panic. Small steps.
Six, be grateful and content. It is really hard to balance hoping for the future, asking God for more time, and being grateful for each day and content.
Yesterday, I went to Pasir Panjang with dad in the morning and to the supermarket. Even though I stayed in the car, it helped to pass the time. Jasmine called, she knows now and wanted to take me out to lunch, she will have stopped work in March and will come more often then. Liping came to lunch, I liked that she is so positive and loving. The one thing that gives time meaning, is relationships. I didn’t have much time to think. I went to shower and then went to Shenn’s house, driving there felt real, like a good step. I like Shenn’s house. It is difficult to go to most friends’ houses because they have parents there and it is crowded and complicated, or have many kids who are always sick.
Shenn’s house is calm and being with Luke is calming and happy, his needs are consuming and I noticed the whole time I was there, I didn’t think about cancer at all. For the first time in a long time. I didn’t think about anything else necessarily either. It was like spending time with Kate before, when she was a baby, just lying in her playpen as she moved around me, or on her mattress before bedtime. Kate healed a hole in my heart and Luke was doing the same. Why do I always need to have these holes healed? I want to do something big and happy just for myself, but I have no idea what. Maybe we can travel around the world for a year. I have no idea what means anything at this point. After two hours with him, I was tired out.
I could smile in the evening. I had forgotten about the massage. It was good, Willy is cheerful and take-charge, which is really nice. It was too late for a walk with Mum afterward, so we did yoga videos. I like that, it was dark and cool and calm, no fussing, no forcing. I felt better, I made kaya and pandan cake and felt like it had been a good day, I could think of things in a positive light. I went to sleep and fell asleep easily, I woke up a few times at night but managed to go back to sleep and had dreams of Stanford. Sometimes the sleep is so light that I don’t know whether I’m actually awake or sleeping but last night, it was deeper dream sleep.
The Jawbone showed I had a few parts of deep sleep, but a lot of light sleep, a total of 9 hours. Yesterday Liping said she remembered from before when I used Zhan’s Jawbone that I had a lot of light sleep and not much deep sleep. That’s actually true, I had not had deep sleep since, maybe Monk’s Hill, or when I was on vacation at Stanford, I always slept like a baby there. Why is that. Was I stressed by work, or trying for a family or the big house space and parents that I didn’t feel I could manage, or was the combination of all of it just taking on more than I could manage and suffocating? I don’t know. Constance says that too, that over the last couple years, I had become more unhappy, worrying about everything. I don’t know what to do about it. That doesn’t make sense, how can life be more than you can manage, and at that time, it didn’t feel that way to me, although yes, I remember being stressed and unhappy at different things, at life being more complicated, more forced. How can it be every now that everyone else can deal, old and young, with so much and I’m having such problems.
How do you make changes if you don’t know what to change. If you don’t know what caused it, do you just avoid everything in paranoia? Because you may never know, then how do you live? I’m still working that out too.
This morning, I woke up and the sense of disbelief was there, a little bit. How can I be here, how can I be so dependent, how can this be actually happening, it seemed so unreal. Usually that’s not there anymore. But I could still smile this morning.
I went for a walk and the thoughts started swirling, I felt disheartened not in the sense of whether IVF had led to this but that despite the gynae oversight, it was not an early stage. How long had I not caught it or reported it myself for? How close had it been to a stage four? I felt confused because I don’t know whether to hope and prepare forward but what if you are just unlucky and there isn’t much future, and what is much? And if people are in stage four, what do you tell them, that everyday life is a choice? To be content and grateful for each day. I can’t deal with that duality, do those people go back to work or enjoy working? Or does their life just simplify and if you’re young, what do you do with ambition or doesn’t it matter anymore.
The one thing that I do know, on the other hand, is that given what actually happened, God saved my life for a purpose. I don’t know what that is, but the flip side of early stage confidence, is perhaps confidence in this. It is so confusing.
I felt sadness, because I had hoped to carry a child, like everyone else I see, like what is normally expected and considered natural if you are young. And I felt let down by my body, by myself. But I don’t know if I had expected that because I see it around me, or if I actually wanted that experience, or just wanted to have a family and I think it was always the latter. It was something I wanted to do in life but now I’m confused because I don’t know what life means. I don’t want to have surgery, I am scared of that and what I will be after.
The therapist said it’s ok to have these feelings and to not drown in them. She said to think of this experience as a scar, that will always be there, but to take steps to stem the bleeding with choice and positive reinforcement. Will they go away with time? I hope so.
