My greatest fear in life is that my Mam would get cancer.

I am not afraid to die. I don't imagine car or plane crashes or drowning at sea. I'm not afraid to fail or make mistakes. I have failed at many things and made more mistakes than I can keep track of. I'm happy in hindsight that I have, since I learnt more about myself through my mistakes and 'failings' that I ever would have if somebody had told me what a broken heart or poor judgement feels like. I am a stronger, better person that I was before.
None of these things instill fear in me. I even find the dark oddly calming, natural even.

Ever since I watched my grandmother wither away to a shadow of herself, enclosed in papery, milky skin, her body riddled with pain and hurt of cancer when I was eleven years old, my greatest fear became that my own mother would get cancer.
Not that she would die from it. Or suffer from it. Just that she would get it in the first place.
And now she has it.

In her beautiful, soft, comforting, mothering breasts. Breasts that fed me, breasts that were a warm cushion as a baby, as a child. Even as a teenager, some heartaches were too much to bear where I couldn't pretend like I didn't care anymore and needed my mother. Her violet blue shirts and warm cardigans wrapped around her chest soaked up my tears until no more could be shed. Ever since I was a little girl, I also associated my mother with this beautiful curvaceous chest of love and warmth.

On my birthday in March I felt invincible for the first time in my life. Everything that I had overcome had passed. I was where I wanted to be and surrounded by such love. For the first time everything had come together. Four days later, Mam told myself and my sisters that she had cancer. In her breast. And my world crumbled entirely. Without realising it, I was frozen to the ground with fear.
It's three months later and I only realised on Sunday the reality of the situation.

I haven't been able to function since that day in March. I have peeled myself off the mattress in the morning and talked my way to the train to get to work. My relationship nearly fell apart because I was a numbed, fearful shadow of myself within a matter of days of finding out. And it took me three months and finally discussing it in gulps of tears with my Mam to realise that my greatest fear has become a reality.

Now that that has happened, I feel that the universe must believe there are more lessons of life in store for me. Many, many other trials and tribulations will no doubt occur in my life, including during Mam's treatment. At least I can take comfort in the fact that even if I barely managed it, I'm still standing. I survived my greatest fear. Now I have to get through each day.

The next two days will test that theory.
Right now as I type, Mam is having both of her beautiful breasts removed, her fifth operation since March.
Tomorrow I'm going to the hospital to see her with her beautiful breasts having been permanently taken away. This is modern medicine and I don't understand it. How can scarring someone like this be modern and advanced? Nevertheless, we will work as a family with love and understanding to work at the rest.

If you've read my other posts, you may be wondering where my man has gone.
He never left.
Even through the last three months of turmoil, even when I thought he would never understand and probably couldn't begin to, he was holding my hand.
He kissed me on the forehead today. On the lips. He held my hand and when he hugged me I swear he was ten feet tall.

My mother may have breast cancer but she's a powerhouse, I've lived through my greatest fear and things will get better. I just have to keep believing that and take time for hugs and kisses and the holding of hands.

Since my last post so much has happened. Some have been excellent. Other events have been very tough. I seemed too busy to write when so many good things were happening all at once I felt like I was going to burst with happiness.

Now I'm back at the keypad. Inspiration comes from the sorest points and writing anonymously is the best therapy I can find right now.

A lot has has happened in the last few months since I last wrote. I had such good intentions to make this blog an integral part of my life each week, factoring in all the details of events and emotions linked with my move up to the Big Smoke.

Good intentions, I have learnt, even more so now, do not a completed blog make. It is a wholly positive thing to have such intentions that inspire and make me happy with thoughts of creativity, expression and more importantly, sharing. I've been beating myself up long enough over my negligence and consciously decided that more procrastination due to disappointment in myself has absolutely no positive affecs on what I want to do or ow much this blog means to me.
There is no way I can even begin to go into the detail that is required to explain the innumberable events, emotions, trivialities, triumphs and heartbreaks so instead, for today, here is a listed summary. And that will have to do.

I started a veggie garden, joined GIY growers in the Co-op and never went, nursed 100s of salad leaves only for them to flower and seed early but wow their flowers are beautiful-yellows and purple veined milky whites. I waited expectantly on organic blue lupins only for them not to arrive at all and delighted in freshly rained on wild rocket that is thriving happily all on its own in the garden. I've gotten a job-after six months of applications I got three interviews in two days. I've moved in with my boyfriend and loved waking up to him and our little routines but have also suffered at the hands of the devil spawn witch that was our letting agent until we broke the lease and got the hell out of there. We have purhased, moved into and now happily cosy and dreamy in a five metre canvas bell tent with stove-even the rain and the howling winds (Ireland in summer). All these things happened and still we kept on trudging and skipping alternately through life.

I thought I had finally had my life the way I wanted it, brimming with love and self confidence on my 26th birthday in March.

Four days later my Dad called and that evening my Mam told us she had cancer.
That's when everything changed.