The past month has involved a good deal of emotional flailing. Emotional, because at the end of March, I went in for my last dose of chemotherapy, and trying to explain how that makes me feel is a task and a half. Flailing, because I got my PICC line pulled out then too, meaning I can once again practise the ancient art of expressive arm-flinging without worrying that I'm going to accidentally pull it out and cause my entire venous system to unravel (I am reliably informed that the consequences of accidentally pulling out a PICC line are pretty much the same as letting a nurse pull it out on purpose, but my scumbag brain seems reluctant to use this information in any useful way). I suppose I could utilise my newly free arm to interpretively dance my feelings about the end of chemo, but that might end up confusing us all even more. Let it suffice to say that I don't think finishing chemo feels very much like I thought it would, and even when it feels good it also feels a little bit like losing something. Being untethered is both freedom and abandonment. Sometimes it's hard to tell which is which. Currently, the only way I can accurately answer the question 'How are you?' is through a series of vague wiggly hand gestures.
(image credit: rubyetc, who can also be found here, and who I am entirely convinced is a complete genius)
Honestly though, alongside my emotional flailing, I think there might be some legit psychology (as opposed to simple laziness) behind my lack of output recently. I say this as somebody who has absolutely no formal psychology education so I'm going to need you to humour me and put aside any real cognitive theory for the next paragraph.
The past month is the first one I've had for the best part of a year where I haven't felt hopelessly incapable half the time. In terms of physical and mental capacity, I've felt closer to my old self than I have for a long time, and with that physical and mental capacity comes my propensity for perfectionism. As much as I try to fight this tendency, I still struggle with the rather unhealthy habit of basing my self-worth on how well I am able to do stuff. For most of my life, this has been somewhat beneficial because it's a fairly foolproof source of motivation, but it starts to get problematic as soon as your ability to do stuff is compromised by factors outside of your control. I think what happened during chemo, was that I effectively paused that mindset because it just wasn't sustainable. I managed to be content with simply surviving, and anything else I did was a bonus, but now I have better possession of my faculties again, I've accidentally pressed play and welcomed back with open arms my prodigious talent for self-criticism. Suddenly, nothing I produce is good enough. I fear everyone else is going to judge me as harshly as I judge myself. Instead of churning stuff out, I hesitate, and I backspace and I backspace and I backspace and nobody gets anything.
Of course, I realise that's stupid, so I'm just going to publish this and hope it jolts me back into thinking Sensible Adult Thoughts. I'd also like to remind myself that nothing I produce is EVER going to be perfect, so it's much better to embrace the imperfection than try to fight it. There will always be mistakes so I may as well enjoy them.
I'd like to end this post with a list of toilet words just for funsies: poo bum wee willy smelly fart.
Abi xx
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