Cancer Becomes Me

I spent the last few days a-packing in the friends, as I said I would. Some of these guys I haven't seen since the time-before-cancer.

Now I know I said I wouldn't mention the hair thing again, but I have to make an exception here because I still really hate it. I wish I had gone with my initial gut instinct and shaved it off. I don't want this funky short crop. It's too normal. I wish I had shaved it off and provoked a reaction different to the 'my, it really suits you' stuff.

No, it bloody doesn't. The me before cancer had long hair. I want that me, and not this me. Cancer has forced this on me. I didn't choose it and I don't want it.

I am in denial. More of this later.

Anyway, pretty much everyone has said 'I was steeling myself; I was ready to lie to you and say it was nice, but actually it really is nice'.

I think they lied and lying.

The other thing I have noticed the last few days is this; Cancer becomes me.

Everyone says I look so 'well'. Indeed, lots of people have said 'it's taken years off you'. There you go ladies, don't bother with expensive face creams and Botox injections, just go and get cancer and a funky and fabulous short crop. It'll take years off you (literally).

Bless them all. I obviously realise they are all being kind and trying to say things which will make me feel better. I know this, of course I do. And I truly don't make any sarcastic retorts to their kindnesses.

But fuck me, I so want to. It's not personal...it's not because I want to make them feel bad (which it obviously would, which is why I don't), but because I think I might be beginning to feel a certain injustice and brewing anger over all this. The hair being shorn is the catalyst and the ever-nearing date in the West Wing the simmering-to-boiling point continuance of it all.

Look, I still think this is just one of those shit things that happen to people. I remember saying cancer doesn't just happen to other people and Kylie Minogue. I know them the breaks. Really. And my sense of humour is still intact and ready to go...but a little self doubt has reared its head. A little fear and a feeling of unfairness...

...last night I sat and watched Ashes to Ashes. Alex kept bloody harping on about 'going back' (but this time its to the 1980s and not 2010...oh do make up your mind, Bowls).

I want to go back too. I want to go back to the 1980s and be a teenager again. I want to listen to the Cure and New Order, I want to wear my 80s clothes and have bloody hair again.

I want to go back and be me again, without all this cancer shit.

I think I realise, now, that it is all down hill from here. This is it. It's beginning and I am now about to join the rollercoaster-which-you-can't-get-off-of.

And I think I realise, now, that the whole humour thing has had a tinge of denial to it. Not a lot, just a little.

I know, I know...the Ex-Boyfriend told me this weeks ago 'Don't forget I know you' he said, 'this humour thing is your way of dealing with it'. And I knew he was right (but like I would give him the fucking satisfaction of telling him this down the phone...there is a reason he is my ex-boyfriend).

And it has been to a certain extent. But it has also been a way of softening the blow for those-I-love. Nothing diffuses fear like humour. Nothing decreases sadness like a guffaw. Nothing negates stress like a bloody good laugh.

So I am laughing at Gene Hunt's bloody good one-liners and attempting to whip this fucking stupid short crop, which Ollie the Hair attempted to 'soften' by making a few little curls, into a standing-on-the-top-of-my-head Sidney Vicious style with some Loreal Studio-Studio-Studio Line moulding putty...

...now that was a good advert from the 1980s!


Quote of the Day: "I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humour in it" Frank A Clark