#happy june gloom month to those who celebrate <3

[graciebrams]

its

month

[theyearofcancerousthinking]

June 13, 2019

Edith Gonzalez just died. She was a beloved Mexican soap opera icon. I loved her from Corazón Salvaje and knew she had been diagnosed in 2016. 

I have a weird relationship with celebrities who have cancer - especially breast cancer. I look to those who have cleared their benchmarks: Christina Applegate, Rita Wilson. I keep tabs (from a distance) on those who were diagnosed at the same time I was, mainly Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Every time I catch myself thinking that it can’t possibly be true that I have a clean bill of health I look to the former. Julia Louis-Dreyfus has a way to go before I can look to her for comfort. 

Last week another celebrity died unexpectedly - one of those you have grown up with, always seeing them on tv. And it hits me harder than expected. Knowing how young they were and how sudden their deaths were just drives home one of the main feelings I’ve had since my diagnosis: life is too short to not do whatever the hell you want. Do it, and do it well. Give it everything. Don’t suffer fools. Create the life you want. 

Which is a great segue to the following mental health update I have: after months of my shrink recommending an anti-depressant, I finally relented. My oncologist wanted to refer me to a rheumatologist to explore the source of my debilitating fatigue. He wasn’t down with my blaming chemo + the ongoing hormone treatment. 

My shrink had brought up the option before, but had also told me I did not have a straightforward diagnosis of depression, so I had rejected it. But then, after a trip to celebrate my nephew’s second birthday, I went through three of the saddest, heartbreaking, mentally twisted days where I convinced myself that the sadness I felt at leaving him was proof that the universe knew something horrible that I didn’t. And that S was going to die in a plane crash - and I was filled with anticipatory guilt. It was Doom & Gloom City. I was able to shake my self free from it on the third evening by realizing that I had been there before - I had had those feelings before and the universe hadn’t shown any of its cards. Three days is a long time. 

I had a shrink appointment scheduled already so it was fresh in my mind as I told him about my thought process. My mind did not have time to pull any revisionist history. And yes, I am referring to my mind as someone separate to me because that is how it feels. 

One of the driving points of therapy post-cancer is to find meaning in your life. I have struggled with this concept: what is meaningful? And how does anything meaningful cancel out how shitty life can be? (I definitely scared my brother-in-law and S one night, when I explained there were definite scenarios where I would rather not have been born - I was serious and thought I had good examples, i.e., the Holocaust.) One of the main, if not the only, meaningful experiences of the human condition is connection with those around us. And as someone who is super social and a relatively good judge of character, I have many wonderful people in my life who have been nothing but supportive during this ordeal. But, this was not as heart-warming as it could have been. Maybe as someone super social and open I took it for granted, but it just wasn’t enough. 

For example, I witnessed an exchange between a homeless man and a gruff Long Island type, who did not allow him to pass through the train cars because he was clearly too weak to stand up-straight. My shrink thought that was a nice, heart-warming, meaningful moment. I thought it was nothing in the overall scheme of things. I have a bunch of these conversations with my shrink - no human interaction is enough to convince me that life is not fundamentally hard. 

But now, with my nephew in particular - I was smitten. Thrilled to be bonding now that he is two and has more of an idea of who I am. Proud of that he is a healthy, brilliant, growing little boy. So incredibly proud of my sister and Bro-in-law for how they are raising him. And in the same instant I was feeling these things, I felt sadness that he lives far away, that I didn’t know he had been hitting all these milestones, and then guilt that I couldn’t be happy that he is great, and that in some twisted way I was making this about me? Why couldn’t I just be happy that he was healthy and growing? Why, when I finally found something meaningful did my mind swipe it away and replace it with fear and sadness? As humans we can feel awe and fear - and I can easily find and feel awe - and as it follows, meaning. But I cannot sit with that emotion. But fear? Hell, we have slumber parties, go to sleep away camp, go to boarding school, take long baths. The works.  

My shrink recommended the medication again, and explained that he was not recommending a cast for a non-broken leg (my example) but rather a splint for a sprained ankle. He said I have a mild depression in relation to the menopause. Interesting right? Not the cancer. Not in relation to fear of a recurrence. Menopause. 

I thought about this recommendation for two weeks. I spoke to friends who have been open about being on similar medications or open about contemplating them. I had one more quick episode of the twisted mental gymnastics that my mind engages in when it thinks I am not paying attention. I caught myself thinking that I was tidying up our apartment before a bike ride because if I died people would have to come over to pay their respects in a messy apartment. I was thinking this as if though it were the most normal thing in the world. 

This time, 20 minutes passed before I realized it - not 3 days. Was this proof that I didn’t need medication? Maybe now that I was aware of the problem, I could get out in front of it? 

And then, I saw the Brené Brown special on Netflix. I have been a fan for a long time. She spoke about how some people fear happiness. I thought that, clearly, was not me! Right? Who fears happiness? But then she went on to explain that some people feel happiness and then immediately rehearse tragedy, fearing that the other shoe must be about to drop. And I knew she was describing me. And I knew she was not contradicting anything my shrink had said - it might be human nature to want to control outcomes but engaging in this doom & gloom cycle was not healthy. Brené also mentioned that people who were resilient were good at gratitude and that set them apart from those who rehearsed tragedy. 

I never would have thought I wasn’t somebody who was naturally grateful. NEVER. I have such a controlling sense of guilt that I thought I was a gratitude champ. But, my gratitude spirals very very very quickly into guilt, resentment, anger. Happy I caught my cancer early? Anger for all those who didn’t. Grateful I have great health insurance? Rage for those who don’t. Glad I have loving friends + family who rallied from near + far for me? Deep sadness for those who have to go at it alone. Of course I also mentioned this to my shrink and he pointed out that gratitude exercises are built to circumvent this by asking you to identify small joys: a great cup of coffee, a breezy bike ride, a great new album. 

In the end, I thought long and hard about this decision. As open as I am about mental health (I mean, I do have this blog) I had to confront my open deep-rooted prejudice regarding depression. Shouldn’t I be smart enough to analyze my way out of this? Aren’t I mentally strong (even if I am not as resilient as I thought I was)? Aren’t I high functioning? 

But then the feeling I described at the beginning of this post broke through it all: who the hell cares if I need a pill? Who am I trying to be strong for? Who am I trying to prove this to? At the end of the day, do you think my life will be marked as being someone on an anti-depressant? If I take a pill and it works, then I just improved my life. And if it doesn’t work (it might not with mild depression), I will have tried. I will continue to put the work in during therapy, and maybe one day I won’t need it anymore. I gave my shrink (and me, really) one year of being on it - I figured we could accumulate enough data in a year. But, if I need it until the day I die at 90 years young, and it made my days lighter + happier, then fuck it. Honor those who didn’t make it by taking life by the horns. We get one life and death is a total mindfuck but being hyper aware of it is mind-bendingly freeing. 

[year-of-vegan-eats]

June Round-Up

OK so before I begin June was more than a little stressful so let me add this little preamble before I get stuck into my intentions as I’ll just keep coming back to this.

As I’ve mentioned previously we had a friend living with us for 3 months. Those 3 months were up the last full week of June. Despite having three months to plan the move packing didn’t begin until the week before moving day and nothing was confirmed until the day before which caused me a lot of worry and anxiety as were in Berlin on holiday while all this was going on and moving day was the day after we got back.

So… we got back, packing wasn’t complete, the van was arriving at 9… no 6… no 5… I’m a stickler for organisation and I don’t expect everyone to be as organised as me but this was chaos. Fast forward to moving day and some stuff hasn’t been packed yet, loads of stuff is left behind and there is a promise of ‘I’ll see you next week to sort the rest out’. So trying to help out I begin packing up everything that’s left, half empty dry foods, mostly empty shower gel bottles, unwashed dishes… the more and more we find the more we see it’s basically rubbish, so instead of binning it, it’s just been left behind. Then we get to the room our friend was staying in, it’s been left in a shit state (literally… there was cat shit smeared across the floor).

Understandably we were both angry and upset about this. This is a friend who was family to us, someone who we wanted to help by taking in but we still wanted to be adults about it and resolve this civilly. Sadly we didn’t get the chance, our friend decided instead to cut all ties with us, block any means of communication and leave us to sort everything out.

… So that’s it. Now you’ve got the background let’s get onto how I’ve been doing with my intentions for the year.

Intention 1 – Improve my physical health.

My home yoga practice completely ground to a halt in June. With the worry and stress all I’ve wanted to do is camp out in front of the TV. This has not only been from an emotional point of view but from the physical effects there have been from what’s happened. Turns out my body doesn’t react well to weeks and weeks of stress. 

The spare room was going to become a yoga room after it was vacated but that’s taken a lot of cleaning to get back to normal. I’m working on putting it together now though and being stationary isn’t making me feel good so I’m working hard to drag myself out of the negativity so I can get back to feeling bendy and amazing.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, while we were in Berlin we were averaging 10 miles a day on my FitBit! Which is insane, it didn’t even feel like we were walking that much. As much as I’ve tried to keep it up though these Edinburgh hills kill me and they are EVERYWHERE!

The kids are off school now and tourists are everywhere which means the buses are a nightmare so I’ll be walking to work for the foreseeable future.

Intention 2 -Have a healthier diet.

While we were away I had every intention to be super healthy but the draw of curry wurst was just too strong. I wasn’t as bad as I have been previously, we still ate lots of fruit and veg but we also ate lots of doughnuts.

The first place we visited though was our favorite Berlin restaurant Rawtastic. This has inspired me to once again dust off the dehydrator and make some raw meals for us. Eating healthier has really been helping lift my mood, combined with exercise I’m going to be back to my normal happy self super quick!

Intention 3 – Explore more.

Berlin! This was our third visit and we went to celebrate 2 whole years of being married and 6 years of me living in Scotland. I can’t believe time has going so quickly.

I’ll post more about Berlin as I can’t sum it up quickly here but despite being our third visit we only visited one or two old places, everything else was new to us.

Intention 4 – Be mindful.

This has been really really difficult because of whats happened. I put a lot of time and effort into being mindful of other people only to have it completely thrown back in my face. It’s been hard to deal with someone so close doing this to us and even though a few weeks have passed continues to have nothing to do with us instead of trying to put things right. It’s something that will take a while to get my head around however ultimately I cannot control their behavior and how they choose to react to this situation, I can only control how I deal with it and how I let it affect me.

It’s not going to stop me from letting people in, we have two more people coming to stay with us so we’ve definitely not been put off in that sense.

This month I’ll be focusing more on how to get myself back on track, eating mindfully to give myself the best chance, making sure I exercise to feel better and basically being mindful to catch myself when things are getting to me so that I can break the downward spiral and turn it into something positive.

How has your June been?

from June Round-Up