ellen bell

I don’t know where it comes from. Perhaps I just expected it and it came. I cannot lift myself from it, not even to smile and that shames me. I have so many blessings, why are they not enough?

The man on the radio said that it was International Cousin Day. Well, in celebration of that, I wish you a happier time, cousin mine. And an end to this onslaught of chemo. May all that ails you disappear. Soon. x

I don’t know why it happens, I always used to sleep well, that is until I moved to Bath, then my nights were long ones, as they are now. I was doing a PhD then too. And was just as afraid. Fear does it, I suppose. I want to sink into morpheus but fear won’t let me. The daytime lessens its potency, only for it to return during the night. The fault is mine, as in most things. I know my blessings but fear of failing blinds me to them.

I wake in the night and it grabs hold. It is usually about details, and the fear of not having done enough. Never enough. I am never enough. In my eyes.

I used to get it alot. Now not so much. He’s bought me some cranberry juice online. Let’s see. My body hurts. He says that it’s because I am coming down from all that stress. It is still there but more manageable, so he is probably right. It is nothing, I know, to what some people have to live with. I know my blessings and he is one of them.

It was such an insult of a present, the sort of thing you give to a retiring bank manager. I feel for him. I do. I believe he did what he thought best. I wish him well. A new start.

They about people who die young as not “making old bones”. Will I? My bones begin to feel old. And it is a worry, along with all the other things I grow anxious about, for how will I manage if I cannot work or even walk without pain? I am not alone, I know this. And it is how it should be, I suppose, for it heralds death, doesn’t it? And that, as they say, like taxes cannot be avoided.

I suppose it is the heat and the not be able to stand the duvet on top of me that is keeping me from sleeping. I lie awake staring at the wall, the window, and turning this way and that. I get up to pee over and over. It will pass, he says, and I am sure that he is right, but it does suck the energy out of me. Heigh ho.

I think I have it in my shoulder now, as well as my hips and left hand. Will this ghost my late sixties, then, that sometime ache, sometime pain? I must weather it, I think, as my bones and my skeleton must. We will do it together, moving as well as we can, and accepting life’s distractions as a gift.

I am sorry. I am sorry to see him go. Watching him on PM Questions yesterday, he looked relaxed, but there was a sense of bemusement as to why he was going. I wish him well. A lordship next, perhaps?