The highly unpleasant brain zaps have stopped. But they’ve been replaced by a dark cloud which I have affectionately named Cloudia. Seeing as it seems to be staying a while.

Cloudia follows me about all day but is a slow mover and really can’t keep up with the velocity required to maintain a cunning disguise as a teacher and a mother. She usually only arrives just as I am leaving the classroom/staffroom/carpark/kitchen/lounge. But at night time, when I’m still, she settles down above my head and pisses all over me. Not that light drizzly rain, but great big hefty rain that makes me wake up sobbing for absolutely no reason that I can fathom, other than I must have dreamt something horrible that I can’t remember. 

Cloudia is the dark portent of death. She is there because I’ve had cancer and a miscarriage, and my children might die, or Nate, or my parents, or my friends. She is there as a reminder of how fragile and delicate life is, and how it can be transformed very quickly into exactly how it will always end anyway. She is there as a reminder that there is no such thing as control. No such thing as plans. No such thing as a future, other than in our heads. Everything can change in a split second with a freak accident or a medical diagnosis.

So what is the point? 

There are two options:

1) Accept there is no point and become at one with the darkness.

2) Accept we are all dying of life, (heard this in a film years ago, but can’t remember which film), and get the fuck on with it.

There doesn’t really need to be a point. I can vividly remember realising at nineteen that as there was no heaven, no God, no hell, then there really wasn’t any meaning to our lives. We live – we die. Once the people who remember us die, we cease to exist altogether. It was overwhelming. Can I just add here that it didn’t take me til I was nineteen to realise there was no God, heaven or hell, just that it took me that long to realise there was nothing to be gained from aspiring to get a good job, save money, get on the housing ladder and run the continual treadmill of ‘life’. The ending is the same for everyone, from the richest aristocrat who inherited their country seat and family fortune from mummy and daddy to the poorest homeless person with no money, no family and no friends. Some people will just have the means to have more things than others while they’re alive. That doesn’t make them any better, just luckier in life. 

I’m not scared of dying, but I’m terrified of the cancer coming back and having to spend however long it takes to kill me trying to fight to stay alive so I can be there as long as possible for my children. I’m terrified of something happening to my children, I know a lot of people find a way through it, but I can’t imagine how you can ever learn to live with something happening to one of your children. I’m not scared of my parents dying, I came to terms with the realisation that was going to happen when I was a child, but I will miss them enormously. I am quite scared of Nate dying because then I’d have to be my own rock again, and my ninja mind training is an ongoing process. 

So, with the exception of something happening to my children, I’ve dealt with most of this stuff over time either by rationally working my way through it or crushing it in my mind vice. Therefore I can deduce that Cloudia is getting her nightly refill of salty water from a well that’s either previously uncharted, or is hidden under some dense undergrowth. I suspect stopping the Citalopram is causing chemical imbalances that I’m not used to any more. I’m not suicidal, that would be too ironic. But I am sad, apparently when I’m asleep and have no control over things. I think I’m probably the saddest about losing the baby, because that’s really the only thing I have to be sad about at the moment. I don’t have cancer any more, my children are OK, Nate is as annoyingly unpredictable as ever, my parents are showing no signs of illness or imminent mortality… deduction seems to suggest the last bad thing that happened is behind Cloudia’s arrival. Which is weird, because I feel very rational about losing that baby, but the removal of the Citalopram and the adjustment that requires has not come at the best time. 

I didn’t wake up crying this morning though, and I put that down to spontaneously going out with Lesley Bushell and getting really, really drunk last night, and then coming home and insisting that Nate should really tell me all about quarks, because I don’t understand them. I went to sleep last night with a head full of physics and blood that was over 80% vodka. Cloudia was just a little fluffy bit of cotton wool in a blue sky this morning.

So there you go – if you’re suffering under the weight of your own chemicals, the best thing to do is get trashed, dance stupidly with loads of people half your age, and then talk physics. I am going to re-train as a counsellor.