The General

With Remembrance Day so heavy in everyone's hearts at the minute, a song has been echoing around and around in mine. 'The General' by Dispatch. I fell in love with this song for the music, the rhythms, the beats, but then I heard the words and I just fell deeper. The last few months it has just been on almost constant repeat inside my head.

The song tells of a seasoned general in the army who wakes up on the morning of a great battle and tells his men to leave him, there is no life in following someone's orders, dying for someone else. They are young men, they should be living.

As the general talks to his men;

"He said: I have seen the others, And I have discovered, That this fight is not worth fighting. And I have seen their mothers, And I will no other, To follow me where I'm going. So take a shower, Shine your shoes. You got no time to lose, You are young men, You must be living."

Music is a soundtrack to my life. In a deeper way than normal. When something happens to me, I have a song that makes that situation make sense; love, heartbreak, moments of happiness and pain, joy and sadness, everything I go through I remember through the song I linked it to. And if I can't find one that's right, then I get out my guitar and I write one myself. Music gives me other people's experiences, other people's insights and I find my way through with their help, or I share in the happiness that we have both created individually.

This song captured my view on life - Don't waste your time following in someone else's footsteps, and I love it for that. I love it for it's strong sense of decency and the strength behind the words; for the way this is a story, not just a song; and lately the line "You are young men, you must be living" has struck a chord.

I am young. And I'm going to enjoy living.

I Want, I Want, I Want

I want to moan and cry and grump and bitch to somebody. But I think they're so used to me being the one who puts up with everything that their own worlds would come tumbling down if I let mine slip. So I guess I missed my chance there. And who would I moan to anyway? The mom that I constantly have to reassure that I'm still around; the dad who's too laid back to notice; the brother who's not around; the friends who are 300 miles away; the best friend who's having a rough enough time herself; the beautiful boy who doesn't need my insecurities. So I suppose that's why my thoughts are here. Stupid as it sounds, these little paragraphs every once in a while are what I need to clear my head.

So I'm here, I've got a place to moan and cry and grump and bitch, what next, what do I say? Well I could start with,,,

I'm fed up.

I'm bored.

I'm tired.

I want my life back.

I've realised recently that I don't need the incredible things in life, I don't need beaches and sunshine and seagulls, I just need space. I want time to myself, time to do stupid and pointless things.

I want to wander around expensive shops and look at all the things I could never afford, then go to the shops within my budget and buy something pretty, something that isn't on sale!

I want to go for a run. I want to feel alive again, running into the wind.

I want to spend a whole day doing what I want to do, sleeping all morning, watching crap tv, eating junk food, not going to hospital.

I want to sit in the window of a quirky little coffee house with my hands wrapped around a steaming mug of hot chocolate as I watch people pass by and make up stupid stories for them;

- That young couple have to get home Right Now because if they don't they're going to fall upon each other and undress in public.

- That pale girl with the long dark hair covering her face and the bambi eyes wonders when he will notice her and pull her out of her daydreams, and why can't that moment be Right Now.

- That little boy has to drag his mom to the toyshop so badly he's almost pulling her arm out of the socket because if they don't get there Right Now then the new video game will be sold out.

- That lonely woman with her pink umbrella and her grey hair and her dark clothes mourns a world that never gave her the true love she always saw in the movies and doesn't want to do anything Right Now or ever again.

I want Right Now back. I want to have a Right Now, a Right Now that doesn't involve hospitals and sickness and family and other people. Is that ungrateful? I seriously appreciate everything that everyone has done for me,, but just for a little while, I want to be free of all that, independent, my own person.

I know, it's been I Want, I Want, I Want... What can I say? I'm just that kinda girl!

Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy is hard. It's an endless cycle of treatment after treatment and journey after journey.

It's hard to accept that that is my life now. Or at least for the time being. An hour and a half to the hospital, half an hour's treatment, an hour and a half home again, then sleep. I sleep so much it's hard to believe. I have no energy to do anything else. Even moving from one room to another is an effort.

But the hospital itself… that's strange. It's corridors, and happy music, and lights off then on again, positioning on the table, treatment that makes blue lights dance behind my eyes, and clacking heels down the corridor, and laughter with the radiographers, frowns and groans in the changing room. Smiles in the waiting room as everyone has a kind of camaraderie, we're all in this together, all us sick people being cured. Grimaces as we are alone, each of us unwilling to wish this on any one else. Cause yeah, it's a painless treatment, and it doesn't take long, but it's later, it's life outside the hospital that stops. You can deal with the treatment, spending time at the hospital, because you have to. When you are home, when life is your own again, your energy is gone, your eyes are tired, your stomach, your throat hurt, but that is nothing compared to the nausea and the perplexing sleep depravation - eight hours a night is not enough, I need at least 12.

We can deal with the hospital. But on the outside, there is nothing, we are empty shells.

And I'll be honest; if I have to be a shell, I'd rather be one on the beach!

Him

I love him. I love him with the whole of my heart. I love him to the point where it hurts.

I feel like I will never be alone. Like I will always have him who understands me to the point where I don't even have to speak and he knows what is in my head. My heart soars when I think of him and dream of him and when I look at him I forget how to breathe.

But we are apart. Separated. Split by hospitals and 300 miles. And when it isn't distance that keeps us apart, it's life itself. He runs and swims and surfs and does things as ridiculous as the Ironman challenge. I'm stuck doing nothing but waiting for the next day of treatment, getting tireder by the day, staying with the family, slowly having my life sucked away.

I want to give him the world. I want to run barefoot in the sand with him, chasing tales in the rain. But I don't know how. I just hope he can forgive me, and remember that if I'm well again... well then the world is his!

* Footnote: Ironman = a crazy triathlon of 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile cycle and 26 mile run - one after the other, no break, no rest, just pure relentless fitness.

Don't Leave

You woke up and said, "Baby I had one of those dreams again.

The rain came down and I lost you in the wind."

You said something about, "Don't Leave," before you fell back to sleep,

Before I could sing my song back to you.

Deep Reflection

Today seems to be a day of deep reflection. A day of hiding under the covers and pulling the curtains closed, hiding the sunshine behind them. A day of researching new people and new books to read. A day where I'm shutting out the world and hiding. Because today everything seems too hard to face.

Pain is back today. Pain that makes it too difficult to contemplate moving, but which is fine so long as you stay lying down and motionless.

It's days like this that make me miss the old days so much more. The days when I would get up every morning and run 5 miles like it was a click of the fingers. Those are the days I lived to be a contradiction. I'd skate and surf and run, swimming in the sea, living outside, laughing with the boys. And then I'd become a structured and strict ballerina with perfect lines and pointed toes, a trampoliner, pulling shapes and somersaults in the air as though I was weightless, and a teenage daydreamer, staring out of the window at the clouds as though they hold the secrets of the world.

See everyone thinks I'm so strong. I'm the tough girl who can throw back a quip and laugh at the pain. I'm the one who takes the biggest falls off the board, comes to the biggest scrapes but gets up and laughs it off.

But I'm not really who they see. I'm the geeky kid in the corner who loves to write, the one who hides out in the library looking for the books that will change her life. I'm the quiet one who thinks too much about everything. I'm afraid of what people think of me. I'm afraid of falling. I'm afraid of everything. The trick is just not to let people see.

Time

I've been quiet on the writing front lately. But things have been hectic, and life calls.

Here is my big news… I made it to 19. I never thought I would, but I guess this birthday just snuck up on me and took me by surprise. But then so did operation 3. I had to go in for that on my birthday itself. And the day after, they whacked out as much of the tumor as they could. Guess it wasn't worth keeping it in there anymore. So suddenly, things have become very positive in a way I never expected. Cause now, although I still have cancer, it seems like there's actually something they can do about it.

It's a weird situation. To spend months of your life with no hope, no chance, and then suddenly to get that back. It's only a sliver of a chance, but it's something. And I'm gonna hold on to it and fight for it as much as I can. I told everyone I would beat this, and now for the first time, I'm actually starting to believe it myself.

Hospitals are strange though. Strange soul destroying places that are supposed to save you but make you feel like the last thing on Earth you want is saving. And the more time you spend in them, the more you think about time. What is it? And what right do we have to it? We are born, we live our life, and we die. But what is life? And what is death? I always assumed that life is something everyone should be entitled to. But now I think, what should we do with that life? What can you possibly do with this time we are given that makes it worth it? I used to think stupid things; the smell of cookies hot in the oven, that first glimpse of the sea as you come over the hill, lightening brightening the rain, other pointless little things that made me smile. But now I am confused.

I can see nothing.

You live your life and then you die one day and once you are gone, what then? Your friends and your family will remember you, but then they will die, and in a few years, no one will even remember your name. Someone else will be living in your house, doing what you used to do, other lives go on. And what are we then? Not even a memory.

So it makes sense that we should just do what we can with what we have and enjoy what time we are given. But what can we possibly do to make it mean something? Sitting, watching tv, cruising on the computer, what is the point? But then incredible things, holidays, fantastic places, people, creatures,,, who decides what makes your life a good one? Is it in the happiness you get from it? In the happiness we give to other people?

I can't make sense of anything at the moment. And that's scary.