Terror Waxes and Wanes

21/10/14

After months of negotiation, prevarication and delay I am about to exchange contracts and move from a one bedroomed flat, where I have lived since 1996, to a small house, in a small town.
 I think I am about to make the mythical 'exchange' but I am not sure as over the last three months of scanning, copying, printing, emailing,screaming, crying, packing, unpacking, cleaning, polishing, hammering, recycling, phoning and hanging on the line listening to music which sounds like someone farting with their arm-pit, I have concluded that the solicitor and estate agent are so deeply infatuated with me that they don't want me to leave London and seem to put every possible obstacle in the way of my doing it.
Perhaps in their love they are trying to protect me because as the fantasy move out of London creeps closer with impetus of a glacier, I now realise that this change of location, upping at last to a house, although it's not much bigger than my flat, will wipe out all my savings, every penny. I have just enough in funds to make the  move, but may then go into debt. I've had the savings since I left the Daily Mail in 2005 and I liked having them there, unused. At one time I wouldn't have bothered too much about this, twenty years ago I could take such things in my stride, I was earning quite a lot then, but also I viewed the whole of life as an adventure, a quest to see exactly what you can do this side of the law. Since I left full time newspaper work  I've  got settled in this cosy hole in the ground and lost the trick of rolling with it. I have to find my old view of life again, quickly, otherwise instead of starting a new chapter my future will be dulled by anxiety.

Some months ago I went to have my annual check up at the cancer clink and the doctor told me she was amazed that I'd survived thus far. She wanted to show me to students to encourage them. I asked her about the other people I'd met in the chemo clinic. She said, 'only a handful' had survived. I wanted to ask for names, in particular one woman I'd got to know well. We had been in touch by e mail for four years but now I wasn't getting any replies. I didn't dare to ask about her.
Doctor's never say the right thing to me, even when they are being optimistic and  I felt so traumatised that I visited Maggies cancer support centre at Charing Cross. They listened to my survivor's guilt and could only really say, well yes, that's the way it is.

Yesterday I was swimming and praying, which is a very good thing to do. While you are swimming, head under water, gliding along, no one can interrupt you, your thoughts can flow forwards uninterrupted. I prayed for my dead friend. When I got home there was a post-card from her waiting for me on the mat. It was posted in Hayes, not Heaven. She is still here - her cancer was worse than mine, she only had half the chemo, but she is still here!

I rang her, her e mail account is frozen, I forgot to ask her why, but we talked for over an hour. She has nearly finished her Phd. and  her life goes on. The depression I'd carried about losing her melted away.