You, Are My Beloved

 The tangle web of unfortunate events has been a cause for my quietness on here of late.

When everything happens, and it feels like everything, small things like nurturing a creative outlet of a little blog seems to really get put on the back burner.

For a wee little minute I thought about shutting it all down. I mean, call yourself a writer but not write. Now that’s an oxymoron if I’d ever heard one, right?

And all these bloggers that say, “ it’s been ages” or “ I think of posts to write all the time” or “I’ll definitely write more often”, I hear you, loud and clear.

My Beloved, has been chronically unwell since February this year. Watching someone you love go through extreme bouts of pain and watching the motivation dribble away from their face has been heart- breaking. I cannot describe to you enough how my heart hurts watching the man I adore go through what he is going through this year. Steve was diagnosed with Advanced Rheumatoid Arthritis.

It has been a rigmarole journey through doctors, and specialists and trying to get answers and some sort of solution or action plan to move forward. To get him on a path that where it can be managed. A man, that even 12 months ago, could out do in stamina, and physical work of a man half his age to now struggling to get out of bed, having pain that I can see in his face is quite fierce and knowing that I cannot do anything about it.

 

He struggles with pain, he struggles with sleep, he struggles with day-to-day things where now in my mind “a good day” or “a bad day” is common lingo. It’s hard because on the outside he looks the same. But look close, the eyes tell a different story. The eyes, his eyes tell me everything.

He started chemo tablets three weeks ago. It scared the shit out of me, and Google, well Google was not my friend at all - down I went in the rabbit hole of researching EVERYTHING.

So far, no real improvement, it could take weeks and weeks for his body to adjust and for us to see whether this form of treatment will help him.

 

This day take this, next day take that, you cannot take this with this – that’s what chronic illness looks for him.

As much as I have wanted to share the changing seasons throughout the year on our tree-change journey and spam you all with new cooking and fire making skills I have acquired, the most motivation I got was posting snaps on Instagram. Staring at a blank screen awaiting wordsmith extraordinaire to arrive, with pre- conceived expectations from myself, was something that I couldn’t handle. As someone said to me recently, I went into my cave and put a big fat boulder on the entrance. Self-preservation has been key to staying afloat and trying to be the strong one.

I have crumbled along the way. I’ve cried and sobbed and not showered for three days and screamed in the paddocks. I’ve put my big girl pants on and got on with the day-to-day life that all of us do. And sometimes, nothing beats massive, snot filled cry and howl.

There have been a million missed calls on my phone. Calls that have taken forever to return. Messages that have been seen and replied to in my mind but in reality no reply has sent. Yes, I have been one of those.

So that’s what’s been going on in Bliss and Mayhem land.

Where my beloved needs me, and the boulder of my cave has only slightly cracked open.