Despising the snow dome

I really can’t pin point what it is about this piece that I hate… but I do! I despise it.

This was written very early on in my cancer ride that began almost seventeen months ago now. My surgery had been performed and I think I had weathered my first chemo treatment at the time of writing. None of it went as expected. It was horrid. I was really struggling to convey to my husband how I was feeling.

Every time I read this piece and try to edit it I feel sick and angry… throw something angry.

Maybe it’s because I feel it’s such a poor effort at trying to describe the churning of my insides at the time or maybe it’s because I don’t think it’s up to my self- enforced writing standard of attempting to help the reader feel my story. I just don’t know. It frustrates me no end.

But what I do know is that I have to let it go. Deleting it just isn’t enough so I’m going to release it to the blogosphere in a vain attempt to be rid of it in some cryptic symbolic way.

Here goes… bye bye you irritating titled ‘Snow Dome’ piece. May you meet your fate, or rest in peace… whatever!  I’m not sorry to see you go and shall not re-visit you…

Snow Dome

I feel like my world has become a snow dome. Nothing or no one is anchored or glued down and some cruel sadistic hand has picked us up, turned us upside down, given us a few extra shakes for good measure and then turned us right way up to land wherever we fall.

I imagine who ever belongs to that cruel hand is hopping from one foot to the other doing an excited twisted little dance as we are placed on the table top, clapping his hands with a broad psychotic smile as his un-kept hair bounces wildly about.

Then he crouches down with wide eyed anticipation, eagerly wringing his hands together waiting to see what will happen next. All the while his long pink tongue hangs and wavers comically from one corner of his mouth like a puffed puppy as he excitedly bounces around waiting for the next movement.

“What other explanation could there possibly be?” I ask myself! “Our world as we know it has been brutally and uncaringly tossed into liquid space with no soft landing. Surely someone must have hold of it?”

My greatest fear as a Carer has been realised. My own health has failed my family… my own health has failed myself. This snow dome affect has every one of us floundering and flailing about, desperately grasping for hand holds and sure footed ground. Most days there are none.

In one twisted violent shake of our life the Carer now becomes the cared for and everyone’s identities and roles are changed and scarred forever. Pieces of ourselves left scattered around like a jigsaw puzzle. How we all individually and universally fitted together as a family now strewn in jumbled piles.

We pick up jagged pieces and study them to see where they should fit… some pieces don’t fit any more. They’ve changed shape… warped through the sheer ferocity of the upheaval… or they have been chipped on landing. Some pieces become more dented as we toss them away in frustration for they no longer resemble parts that were familiar and they don’t slot and work where they used to fit.

Like it or not we must craft new pieces from old… we must tend and sculpture our shattered selves with patience and kindness… we have but no choice to accept… and hope like hell the character with the cruel sadistic hand, and floppy tongue, has had enough goofy pleasure for a while and turns his amusement to something else before he gets bored and returns for another vigorous shake of our snow dome.

My husbands response to this was “Oh Sandra, does doing this really help?”  Usually it does, but this time it didn’t.  And the cruel hand did return… again and again.

Have something niggling away at you?