Today I want to write.
That may seem a little strange. It does to me. Yet I need to share this sentiment, or motivation. It feels distinct and unusual for me right now, and therefore full of hope.
I have cancer.
A few months ago, I wrote about starting chemotherapy on Facebook; it was a sudden, rather impulsive declaration. I had decided to chop all my hair off before losing it and to send it to the Little Princess Trust, so it seemed like a good opportunity to raise some money for the charity too (something it did rather well, so thank you to anyone who contributed!) Once I had done it, I felt relieved to have put it out there into the world, or at least for more people to know without me having to tell them individually. But I couldn’t write “I have cancer”.
(At least not on the Facebook post, I may have done it on the fundraising page – context is everything).
Now, the words come more easily.
Though quite possibly, having had surgery last week, I can write that only after the fact, for perhaps by now, fingers crossed, they got it all out and I no longer do…
In many ways the mind takes a longer time to catch up with the body when you are diagnosed with a critical illness and go into treatment. I guess that is shock. The body must get on with the job of getting well again…the routine of attending multiple appointments and being prodded and poked… or to be honest, in the case of primary breast cancer, it feels like the body must get on with the job of getting ill to get well again. I didn’t really feel unwell until I started chemotherapy; but then my body underwent a brutal onslaught and had the enormous job of coping with, and moving through, the toxicity and unfathomable fatigue.
Of course, there is a mental toll from that too; it is hard work getting through each day and trying to remember why you are doing it and what on earth could make it worthwhile.
So in terms of the bigger picture, the mind, well, it sneaks up on you and surprises you every so often, suddenly churning up (spitting out?) thoughts and related feelings that feel like they should have been thought or felt at least five weeks previously, reminding you what you are facing – or what you have been facing all these weeks – on a more existential level.
Hence, the delay in being able to write “I have cancer”. I had to accept it myself first.
Seven weeks after chemo prematurely ended, I started to feel more like myself again, only to undergo surgery, yet again making me feel tired and weak. By this point I was also confused and frustrated that my body could not keep up with the desires of my brain which had started (or at least begun to start) firing on all cylinders, eager to get back out in the world and start creating again.
A reversal of sorts. Now my body is behind my mind. Though today, for the first time, I want to write. Perhaps it is starting to catch up.
I intended to write all the way through chemo, but I just couldn’t. I started a journal on the 1st of January, feeling that at least if I started it then – so neatly at the beginning of 2025 – I could forgive myself all the missed entries that should have been written in December, November and October since my diagnosis. I have written in it about four times.
Equally, I kept thinking about pieces I could write for this – my Thought Space – and they would begin to unfold in my head, but I just seemed unable to get myself to the point of putting pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. It just felt too much. Impossible to connect the thoughts – lucid or foggy – to the space. The space beyond me. They were locked in, inactionable, without body.
When I was coming round from the anaesthetic – which took a rather long (‘record’ according to the nurse looking after me) time – I could hear three words inside my head whenever he talked to me, seeing me open my eyes. But I couldn’t get them out. I know there were three, and I think they were “I can’t speak”. I couldn’t. And they would be useless, paradoxical communication anyway. So, I would drift back off to sleep. It felt very much like they were locked in.
I realise that I have felt locked into my own body for months. No, scrap that, locked into a body I don’t entirely recognise.
One day in December, or was it January, I remember saying to a dancer friend that I was looking forward to wanting to dance again. That was strange. Not looking forward to dancing, or being able to dance, but to wanting to dance. The concept felt so alien, I was so tired, in the deepest way possible, back, way back, buried, deep within my skin, with only microscopic energy that dissipated almost before it began.
I’m no longer sure what this writing is about. I felt an urge to write. It has exhausted me. There is so much I want to write about (I think…it teeters on the edges, hard to grab hold of) but I am forced to wait. There will be other times. I cannot do my usual connections. I had intended to write about the discovery of innate human kindness; the fact that cancer – though absolutely unwanted – had brought me into the vicinity and care of the kindest people I have ever met. And that that had been a gift. Maybe, one day, I will write about that.
I found myself here writing about the strange relationship between body and mind during this cancer treatment.
I am not done. I have not made it clear. It seems to work in both directions. The mind catching up with (tripping up?) the body, the body struggling to catch up with the mind.
And yet another day I will write about the extraordinary mind/body experiences I have had during complimentary reiki sessions over these months, confirming for me that the processing takes place in the body, ‘unworded’ too. Confirming an intrinsic and inseparable interconnection between body and mind. I have felt the churn. The battle. The release.
So how can they be playing catch up? I am full of contradictions.
I find unfurling my thoughts so much harder now. But I am not going to wait until I am clearer; that time may never come. I’m going to put this out there now; and allow my process of writing to be part of my sense-making.
Forgive…or embrace…these unfinished thoughts.
Today I wanted to write. And that is enough.
