It’s day 14 today. I’m feeling a bit better physically, the plan is to go back to work on Monday. The mental blank is also receding, and unfortunately, negative thoughts have started to whirl around in my mind once again.
Last night was hard – I wanted to drink. I became so caught up in the idea that my husband ought to be looking after me better. He hasn’t really helped me much as he’s been too busy with work. So during the day, I have pottered slowly round the house, washing pots and cleaning in fits and starts, and going back to bed in between. The iron I’m taking is clearly working though, because I didn’t go back to bed at all yesterday. Progress!
I wanted to drink in the evening, because all my romantic notions seem to have been shot to bits. You see, I thought that due to my diagnosis in hospital last week, and because it could have been so much worse than it is (tumour markers are higher than normal, but not so much as to indicate cancer), I thought Mr W and I would feel so much closer. I thought that he would immediately realise just how much we mean to each other, and that this would in turn give me so much strength to get through even if we find that we are infertile. But no. Everything feels….so normal, so flat. I’ll have to have surgery – possibly more than once – to deal with what has happened to my insides. And for now, I feel uncomfortable and very aware of what is wrong. So I felt pretty rubbish last night.
But I didn’t drink, and I started reading. I downloaded a Wayne Dyer book (Real Magic) onto my Kindle app. As I read about opening yourself up to the idea of living at purpose, rather than at outcome (goals orientated), I started thinking. If there is a reason for me, for my life (which I seem not to have discovered yet), then to be open to that, to be receptive to understanding – or trusting, if I don’t understand it – then I have to let go of my idea of what my life should look like. After all, my thoughts about how my life ought to be have a fairly limited frame of reference. I see how others’ lives are and I think* that should apply to me too. Immediately reducing possibilities for myself, both of what I should be, and how I ‘fix it’ if it’s not happening the way I want it to.
Now, this sort of made the word ‘acceptance’ start rattling around in my brain. I don’t like the word; to me it feels negative. Like awful-tasting medicine that I’ve been told I must take. You wanted something else, but that’s wrong, wrong, wrong for you and you can’t have it. So here’s what you can have – suck it up. That’s what it feels like to me. BUT. If I think of it in terms of letting go which is almost like the flip side of the coin, it feels freeing, a release, a relief.
I said to someone the other day in a comment on their blog ‘just let go of the idea that you need to drink’ or something along those lines. I desperately want her to see that drinking isn’t all there is. Yes, it’s hard to be sober sometimes, but I think it becomes easier if I can let go of how I think my life should be. For example, I think I should be able to drink if I want to? Let that go, and there will be room for different thoughts, better thoughts. I think my husband should behave a certain way towards me? Nope. I’m making very narrow demands… I let it go (and I stop nagging!) and I leave room for something different and better.
Acceptance? For the moment I can’t cope with that, it seems. But looking at it from another angle, letting go might be just what I need to do. There may well be something better just around the corner that wont come into my life just by my thinking about it.
*We have a saying where I’m from, which is very apt: ‘You know what thought did? Followed a muck cart and thought it was a wedding.’ Mr W likes to remind me of this occasionally 😉