This year I have just got back from ballet class where the familiar syllabus is like an old friend, constant through everything that changes. I have jumped and turned and been en pointe. Last year I could barely walk a few steps.
Tomorrow I will go to work, to my wonderful new class of little people with huge personalities. I'm enjoying them so much, perhaps all the more because I only got two weeks of last year.
It should be as simple as that. I was barely able to stand for a minute or two, to speak more than a couple of words together or to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. Now I can walk in the countryside, dance, drive my car, fly on zip lines, go to the shops, relax on my own sofa at home with Mr Peggy, going where I want to when I want to and doing what I want to. It should be that simple.
In the hospital I found hope and fear in equal measure. To begin with, enormous relief that my ordeal was over, everything stopped, no more fighting. Peace at last. Hope for freedom and life to return. The first night's sleep I'd had in weeks. But the darkness didn't leave; it wasn't that simple.
There was pain, fear of the immediate reality and of the future. Gradual realisation that this was going to be the long haul. So many experiences that overwhelmed in so many different ways, which I still haven't processed now and don't know how to (sometimes I think I have more problems now than I did before!!).
The struggle continues daily, well multiple times daily. It rarely leaves my thoughts. I don't always win. Emotions and memories party in my brain and body uninvited and I struggle to cling to what other people tell me is the truth.
But today and tomorrow I'm trying to focus on what I can do that I couldn't do before. This time last year I was deluded enough to think I could be back to school by half term. I was off for the rest of the year. This year I will be there tomorrow and on the first of October, and through November and December and 2021, full of life.
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