Trying to find the words to talk about where I’ve been

I knew I’d have to write this post at some point. I wanted to get back to writing and, now that I’m back in Chicago, I feel somewhat ready to get back to living the life that fuels my little internet space, but before I did that I’d first have to talk about where I’ve been. Maybe I don’t have to but I think if I just waltzed back into a post about life in Chicago saying nothing about what’s been happening, you would be missing a whole chunk of me.

I’ve never been good at sharing things which are too personal. I hate the drama and the vulnerability. I’d rather focus on the good and move along, thank you very much. Unfortunately sometimes life gets just so damn hard that focusing on the good is quite clearly a blatant lie and at times like that, when my stiff upper lip starts quivering, I tend to shut down and shuts up.

The thing is, I haven’t told you everything. I told you I was living in France. I didn’t tell you that most of the five months before our wedding, I wasn’t in France, I was in London, helping my mum recover from a major operation to remove a cancerous tumour on her pancreas. I told you I got married in a beautiful ceremony in the south of France with my mother walking me down the aisle. But I didn’t tell you that just a week earlier we’d been shopping for her mother-of-the-bride outfit in a wheelchair, trying to find something that would flatter her now tiny frame. I told you we were back in London after the wedding. I didn’t tell you that was to help care for mum as she went through adjuvant chemotherapy, getting strong enough to look after herself again. I told you we travelled to Chicago, New Zealand and Australia. I didn’t tell you that when I left, I optimistically believed that mum was one of the few people to have beaten pancreatic cancer, despite the depressing odds. I didn’t tell you that in November, we found out that it had spread. I stopped telling you anything and flew back to London. In February of this year my mum passed away from pancreatic cancer.

I can’t really tell you how I’m feeling now. Not because I’m hiding it, but to be honest, because I don’t really know. Grief is a complicated process. Mine started in earnest as soon as we found out: ‘there’s no cure, there’s just time.’ I can’t describe that time. Every word or metaphor just feels like it’s missing the mark. And then she was gone and everything I’d felt in the previous months went with her and I was left with an empty hole where all those indescribably feelings were supposed to be.

I went back to working within a couple of weeks and kept myself busy with organising affairs, sorting through the house and taking on new work. People kept asking me how I was. I said: ‘I don’t know,’ and that was the truth. And I couldn’t write. That would require sitting and thinking and I wasn’t quite ready to do that.

In London I was feeling overwhelmed and weighed down by the pressure; of doing, of feeling, of being expected to do and feel. Then we left and back, in Chicago, without a world of worry and expectation sitting on my shoulders, I feel like a new person. I’m walking in my own shoes and making my own choices, dealing with it all at my own pace, missing my mum in my own way.

And I think that means I’m ready to write again. Mum loved reading my blog, and always encouraged me to write more. In a way, it feels like a connection; I’m not really sure why. I want to write again. I miss it.

So, that’s what’s happened and that’s where I’ve been.

Life is short and unpredictable; too short and unpredictable to say: “maybe one day when…” and it is far too short to think “maybe if I’d just…” Regret and resentment are a waste of energy. Trying to use that energy for something which makes you happy or makes someone else happy, or both, is a better use of time in this life, I believe.

Thanks for sticking around and reading. I’ll be back soon talking about living in America.

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