Change

I sit here looking at the Substack prompt to ‘Start writing’ and I don’t know where to begin. I have been quiet on here for a few weeks, words have not been easy to find and I am going to explain why, if I can. It will likely not be pretty or full of beauty because I just can’t find that right now.

At the beginning of September we found out that Nigel, my husband has leukemia. Just writing it makes me want to break into a thousand pieces. It was shocking news that neither of us were expecting, a simple tick bite we wanted to get checked turned into a diagnosis nobody wants to hear. We weren’t prepared for it and we weren’t even told there was an issue with the blood results but I am not going to go into how we have been treated because I have no energy for it. I will share though that upon receiving the diagnosis we have been left completely alone, we were told we would not get a specialist appointment as treatment is not yet needed but at the same time we were told that none of our questions could be answered by the GP because its a specialist area, we were sent away to look at google. I have since demanded a specialist appointment and we are told we are on a waiting list.

I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to feel other than this deep sense of dread and I am sadly familiar with it at this point in my life only this is more than I can comprehend. The past years have been hard, Ivf that tore the spirit out of us and a further 15 years hoping one day a baby may come along, Nigel seeing two tours of Afghanistan and coming back forever a different person. Constant financial worries. My grandparents, who mean the world to me fading, or brightening depending on how you see it. My nan suffers with osteoporosis breaking bones regularly and my dear grandad who brought magic to my life has terminal lung cancer. My mum and dad separated which was 40 odd years coming but has left me totally lost. I wanted to support the both of them and instead my mum who I spoke to daily has left my life, having not spoken to me for many months. I try to cope with it but there are times when I can barely breathe through the pain. Now this, this ridiculous, terrifying, heartbreaking diagnosis of an incurable cancer.

I am positive this will be ok, I don’t think its going to be easy but strangely I have the deepest faith that he will be as well as he can be. It’s a type of leukemia that can be lived with and managed, sometimes not but not for Nigel, I just don’t see it. Our biggest issue right now is the realisation that although we both adore life we are both also totally miserable with the seemingly never ending mud heavy path we are walking. I am determined to use this as fuel to create the life we have been dreaming of for so long.

We moved into our home in 2014 thanks to a bit of inheritance left from an auntie which we will always be forever grateful for. However we are both big souls, needing space and nature to the point where it hurts. We currently live in a two bed, ex council house on a road where nobody wants to speak, where litter blows against the front door, where amublances are regulary called for the addicts a few doors down and the bed factory constantly moans throughout the night. We have both tried to make the most of being here, to be grateful for what we have but there is no denying the misery of not being where our hearts want. Every opportunity we get we sit and dream of the place we will one day be, a small cabin on a patch of land, a one bedroom cottage in Scotland, Sweden in the snow.

We are both extremely practical people and ache for a life off the beaten path, Nige is 45 now and I turn 35 in a few days and we have been talking about this dream since 2010. Since leaving the marines Nigel has really struggled, he currently works as a mechanic in a garage, long hours and he is never someone to shy away from work to his own detriment at times. For a year or two he has been coming home only just able to get through the door feeling wiped out with tiredness and now we know why. This morning before work he looked at me and said ‘I can’t keep doing this, I feel broken, I don’t even know who I am.’

I want to change this because when you are faced with such a diagnosis the dream of ‘oh maybe one day’ suddenly seems way too far off. There must be a way we can be happy, to enjoy the time we have together, to make that life for us that keeps us up at night because we can’t stop thinking how it would feel to be happy. I want to do this for me, for the shitty 35 years I have had on this earth and now I want to do this for Nige because without him there would be no me. I shared with you before that a couple of years ago I made plans to end my life and its Nige that saved me so now I plan on saving us both.

So I reach out to you, my amazing followers. Do you know someone who has upped and made the life for themselves they wanted? How did they do it? We have very little in the way of savings and a mortgage but we would be prepared to sell the house and move somewhere but we need to find somewhere that means Nigel doesn’t have to keep working 45 hours a week in a garage infact what he really needs is a good period of rest. When I close my eyes I see a wooden cabin type structure or a small cottage on someones land where we can live and be happy. We need to be away from built up areas and yet that comes with a price at not being able to find a job. Perhaps you know of something that might fit? A piece of land somewhere? A way of magically upping our funds so that we can buy that cottage in the Cairngorms outright. There must be a way, you hear these magical things that happen when you ask the universe and I am a firm believer.

I apologise that this isn’t a gorgeous piece of writing, its just me on a laptop opening my heart and asking for advice