Monday 1st June

It’s nearly nine months since the lump was found in my boob and nearly 8 months since the mastectomy. When I read back what I wrote about then, I am reminded of the horrible time I actually had with uncertainty and operations and drains in forever and things getting infected.

And that was all before the chemo.

And yet, it all seems a lifetime ago. Well, in some ways. In others, I cannot actually believe it’s been so long, because it all feels very, very recent.

Time does that, though: it telescopes and elongates all at once.

Often, it is something that we’ve been looking forward to that just seems to take ages to arrive and then is over too suddenly. When it’s something that’s not so great, it can seem to last forever.

Sometimes I cannot believe that every day is actually the same length. I will have individual days when I seem to get so much done and I feel really productive. Then I will have a day during which nothing really productive seems to happen.

And they will both, actually, have as many hours.

I find that the writing projects I do tend to make time do funny things – at least, seem to do so, particularly the closer I get to a deadline.

It really is a strange world we live in.

At the moment, I have a slight jolt when I see myself in the mirror, because my hair is so very different from what it has been like my whole life – let alone recently (especially as I have had no hair!) It is growing back steadily and like weeds (as my hair usually grows), but the longer it gets, the curlier it seems to be getting. So weird!

I am fascinated to see how it turns out.

There we go with time again. I think it may be because of this whole cancer thing that I am perhaps hyper aware of the passing of time and how it works. This is because it has taken so much time, in its own way; and, also, because it is taking so much time for my body to recover completely from the experience and the trauma.

Time and patience. Two happy bedfellows. Two concepts I am not necessarily that good at dealing with. At least, I haven’t been. One learns, though, out of necessity.

So, I will watch my hair as it grows and continue to give everything time. Isn’t that how the world moves forward?