May Contain Nuts

I went out to breakfast this morning with some of the lovely women I work with, and they had invited along our recently retired boss, Katharine. The first thing she said to me was – should you be out? I just replied with – of course I am Mum, I’m fine! But that got me thinking. Do people think I’m supposed to sit at home and hide? 

I have some amazing friends who have always been there for me over the years, but since my diagnosis, I just haven’t seen them. Why haven’t I seen them? What is it that I’ve done that makes them feel that they must stay away? People message and say, let me know when you want to meet for a coffee. How am I supposed to know when they are free for a coffee? I sit at home, all day, every day, going nowhere. They are the ones who have busy lives with their jobs and their families. 

It’s a sad but true thing that I have seen my physiotherapist more times since my diagnosis than I have some of my friends. I must say though, my physiotherapist has done an amazing job of helping fix my rotator cuff injury! 

So why have my friends been avoiding me? Is it easier for them to stay away due to the guilt they have about being fit and well whilst I am going through treatment? Do they think I have to live in a germ-free bubble where the outside world is not allowed to get anywhere near me? Or is it that age old thing of everyone being so bloody polite that they are waiting for me to message them to ask them to come over? Because, if that’s the case, I would be messaging them every single day of the week. 

I’m bored. I’m lonely. I don’t want to sit and read books every day or watch tv. I’m becoming disinterested in doing anything, because, what’s the point when no-one wants to see you. Why get dressed? Why do anything? 

Yet going out this morning has made me realise that I’m still me. I sat with a group of women who talked about work, and they made me laugh, and they made me feel that I am still alive. I listened to the gossip, the dramas that had happened, the things that were happening in their lives. They didn’t ask me about how the treatment was going; they were too busy filling me in on everything I had missed since the last time we got together. 

On Monday I am going to have lunch with another couple of friends, because they messaged and asked if I was free. Of course I’m free. If I don’t feel well enough to go, I will have to cancel. But I have been well, and that’s what has been affecting me the most. In fact, I have been doing so well on some weeks, I have been just logging on to everything at work and trying to keep myself occupied with that. Who does that? Someone who’s bored, that’s who does that. 

And it’s not just my friends; it’s my family as well. I feel like they now see me as something that just hangs around the house. Simon took me out to lunch, once. We went out to dinner as a family, once. I paid for us all to go away as a family for the weekend, and it felt like something normal as we went to out and did things together. But do I have to keep paying for weekends away just to get that feeling again? I have two working children who haven’t taken me out. Some days I feel like the only thing I am needed for is to be a taxi service for Emily. Hannah would rather go for days out with Tom. There is no thought in that child’s head to do something with me. 

So, if my own family don’t want to do things with me, is it any wonder that my friends don’t want to do anything with me either. Do they all think I am too fragile to do anything? Or are they all just getting on with their lives and thinking I am happy to be the person that life forgot? Is this the superpower that chemotherapy gives you; the ability to be completely alive in the world yet completely invisible to everyone at the exact same time.