It's strange that you should write about the bargains we make. Ten years ago, newly diagnosed with metastases, I remember saying "10 years. 10 years would be amazing". And here we are, as if some greater force had heard me and kept me to that bargain.
Now I'm bargaining again. Two-thirds of a life? Yes, I'll take that. A week of pain and fatigue for 2 weeks of relative normality. That seems fair.
Half a life? Yes, I'd take that. A third, a quarter...
How small would I go? What sliver of life would I hold on to? A finger-nail, like the smallest imaginable crescent moon? Would that be enough? A pinprick of life?
How small would I go? This stays with me. What a question. Like Sodom and Gomorrah... If one righteous man... Such tenacity to live a slow life... Each minute at a time.
My hand has been resting in the center of my chest since I read this. There’s something about that fingernail—“like the smallest imaginable crescent moon”—that is just so arresting, and the question of how little is still enough. I shall be sitting with this for a good long while. Sending love and strength to you, too….
Sarah thank you again for this powerful contribution to this month’s theme. Here is your link… Do invite any friends you have who are hesitant to share their words but want to. I feel this is a safe space for them Tx
Sarah, I find your writing so compelling. I won’t be able to make the story page on the book website for a few days yet this month but when I can I will send you your link as before. Thank you so much. Tx
Sarah, I found this really powerful. Your bargaining with yourself reminded me of those every day bargains we make (well, I think others do too!),one more biscuit, one less glass of wine, a longer walk, more time for a loved one.
But your bargains were so much bigger but also impossible.... I'm rambling but wanted to respond!
Hi Tanya, thank you for sharing and giving us the space to risk it in!!!
As I lay here looking out at the swaying bamboo outside my window I am trying to remember promisers made and bargains struck. It is like looking through muslin in the sun. I am waiting for the memories to take shape the colours to deepen, the stories to come. Bargains, stones and jewellery come to mind. A long time ago whilst paddling in the lower lake in Glendalough I saw a shiny object winking in the sun lit water. I picked it up and beheld a small brooch. A hand made pin clasp faced up and when I turned it around the most delicate inlay of flowers made from Mother of Pearl lay in the palm of my hand. An object of real beauty and days gone by. I later learned it was from the Victorian era and I have always felt a connection with some lady who paddled with her full skirts hiked high who bent to pick a stone and dropped her brooch for me to find. It has been one of my most precious possessions more valuable to me than any eye popping jewels. Many moons later when my dear friend Isabel was moving to live in Trieste I felt the significance of the distance that was going to come between us and how life can fade the consistency of friendship. As I had a fear of flying I knew it would be a very long time until we would sit drink coffee, share our thoughts, ideas, creativity and hugs so I made a bargain with Isabel when I loaned her my brooch! To be brought back in her own time. A few years later Isabel, my brooch and our bond were reunited. This beautiful simple little object has been our bargaining touchstone.
How beautiful. What a lovely story - including your imagined Victorian lady - how amazing that that brooch should find you, and connect you to your friendship.
I love the waiting for the memories to take shape, the stories to come idea. Ive done the same with each theme, mulled the word over, become a bit obsessed with it til something finds itself onto a page. Really enjoyed the connection between all three women in your story.
Such connection over so many miles....and that image: the woman in skirts bent over the water, losing her brooch but gaining a stone, and you so many years later. If I was a fiction writer I'd attempt a short story perhaps! Beautiful contribution, Louise.
Louise! How beautiful - thank you. I won’t be able to make the story page on the book website for a few days yet this month but when I can I will send you your link as before. Thank you so much. Tx
Another achingly beautiful extract from you, Tanya. I'm continuing to process it, read it. I tried to recall a promise or promises I've made to someone else or others, and I came up blank rather oddly...which makes me think I've been trying to hard. So I wrote about promises to myself, but I am now thinking of the difference between making promises to oneself vs another and how they each have their own specific gravity, different than the other.
**********************************
The Secret to Survival
Eventually I make promises to myself because there’s certainly no bargaining as she tells me, nor after. I’ve been sick for double digit years and fought so hard to know what in the first place. Asking the Universe for a fairy tale healing via celibacy or turning towards God and church every Sunday is pointless. I am sick; a fact as immutable as the white walls in this exam room. And she tells me IT is here to stay.
IT is
autoimmune fire in the spine with bum hip shoulder elbow finger knee and toe joints tin man mornings sleepless nights a battery too low to talk or eat or dress a heart’s dance that needs watching ribs that become a wall without flex as achilles burn and eyes turn red and go blind without hourly drops it is all my days however long or short they stretch because there’s no magic pill just band aids
Over the years we apply and remove one band aid after another, sometimes modulating the peaks and valleys of fatigue and pain and sometimes not. Eventually I learn the secret to survival. Eventually I realize, decide: I must come first.
I promise me:
No more people who demand, dismiss, or tie me in knots. Sadly, this goes for family, too.
It’s okay to say no, to balance the ratio of shoulds to wants, to revel in slowness without guilt. The world can rush around me like a stream around a stone as I sit look hear and feel; sleep.
I’ll find different ways of loving old loves like trail and water, with compression sleeves and trekking poles and flotation devices; and I’ll adjust time, loving more or less depending on the energy I’ve got for the day because sick time is different than healthy time. In Chronic World 24 usable energy hours do not exist, nor 12; sometimes not even 2.
Amy, this by you speaks to me so deeply and urgently. I’m having another pain flare that makes walking hard again when I’ve had so few weeks back out in the world walking slow & alone. And it’s simply beautiful writing too.
I won’t be able to make the story page on the book website for a few days yet this month but when I can I will send you your link as before. Thank you so much. Tx
Acceptance, agency - so important in managing chronic illness. Pain is so hard. This is such a strong piece of writing. Sending you love and strength to cope with this.
Thank you for reading, Louise....and for such a lovely comment. I always hope that whatever I write contains some mark of truth for others, because then it becomes larger and not just about me.
I loved this: "It’s okay to say no, to balance the ratio of shoulds to wants, to revel in slowness without guilt." Brave writing and, I know, hard to articulate, but you've done it. Thanks
“I, Jean, take you M., for my lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this time forward, for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…”
We had an insurance policy that we always laughed about. It ended ‘or prior death’.
‘Don’t you dare die,’ I used to say.
That December, for some obscure reason, I decided that the Christmas present would be seven small gifts, one to be opened each month until his birthday on June 10th. It was great fun choosing them, from a mug from Barter Books, the huge second hand bookshop in Alnwick, with a promise of coffee by their roaring fire, to theatre tickets and a pre-performance dinner.
Christmas day was a bit strange. The excitement of seeing someone’s face as they open their gifts was on hold. ‘Hmm. Got that wrong,’ I thought. But he loved the first one and as Christmas was tidied away, six more gifts sat on the table in the bedroom unopened. 10th of January and the first surprise was revealed and appreciated.
However, there is no good way to reveal unwelcome news. Random blood test. Prostrate. Cancer. Aggressive. So followed rounds of appointments, tests, scans, more appointments. We were the fortunate recipients of a company health care scheme that speeded up the processes, the prognosis for prostate cancer was optimistic and we had a promise – ‘in sickness and in health’.
I asked our children the other day, how they had felt.
‘It was great timing. I was walking down Kentish Road on the way to work. Fortunately, my colleague was an ex-nurse and could reassure me!’
‘I overheard you talking.’
Surgery came and went. The insurance policy matured and we benefitted. There were secondary’s that responded to treatment. It did not spread. ‘Prior death’ had to wait. Other consequences were manageable. When we were sad, I always said, ‘I’d rather you were alive.’ And there were the presents to open.
Would prior knowledge have made any difference to the promise? I was not always full of compassion – there was fear, frustration, annoyance even… Sickness does not send a calling card asking if it is convenient to call, or ring ahead to say it is on the way. And for some, a promise may be better withdrawn. But here we are. ‘‘Til death us do part.’
Jean - what a compelling piece from you again this month. I forgot everything else around me from the first line to the last. Thank you for being part of this undertaking, and trusting me & fellow subscribers with your true stories. Here is your link... Tx
Dear Tanya,The image of you 2 sitting there, the space between you, the subtleties of your exchange over such an emotive subject, is so clear. I felt a chill of fear, of a promise made that would then hold you. (So, so happy to hear that this was years ago and you have 2 beautiful kids now.) Loved the interview yesterday. It prompted me to write this, Tamsin
..............
I took it as a promise of love.
It was my first day’s walking in the hot, dry autumn of Navarre. The way wound round a field of full-throated sweetcorn taller than me. They rustled sweet whispers as I went past, but of course it was in Spanish and my ear hadn’t acclimatised yet. As I rounded the corner I saw a solitary figure, standing still, leaning on a stick. I checked behind me to see who he was waiting for and the road was empty. It was me.
He seduced with Mozart and oysters. He kissed with tongued passion, and the lovemaking left me trembling. I texted my friend, ‘Oh that’s what they mean when they say French men are the best lovers!’ As we trekked, he told me about his wife leaving him and I said my husband had done the same. He listed his girlfriends, and I confessed mine. We spoke the language of lovers.
As the days became months, he took photos of graffiti which said je t’aime, he became increasingly jealous when I smiled at other men, sang to me while we walked, and dragged our hostel mattresses onto the floor so we could sleep side-by-side. I once made the mistake of mentioning amour and his reaction should have been a warning, but still we were inseparable.
As winter came on, we arrived, hand-in-hand, at Santiago de Compostella. We eeked it out a little longer, went to Finisterre together, the end of the earth and back. He bought me presents. Then he got the plane home to his girlfriend.
I had thought it was a pledge, but it wasn’t. It was an interlude.
Tamsin. I’ve read this several times, & always my hand goes to my heart, my throat. How deeply this speaks to experiences I and others will have had while also being so vividly particularly your own. Thank you! Do invite friends who you know would love to share words but hesitate to send them out. I feel this has become the safe communal space I hoped it could be. Here is your link. Tx
Absolutely okay to contribute each month! While it’s always exciting to see a new person join - at my or your & other existing contributors’ invitations - I absolutely LOVE getting these regular surprising insights into your & others’ experiences. I love too how in just a few months of these posts, conversations are starting between contributors.
Once the book is published, I may switch from extracts & invites to simply posing a question for subscribers/readers each month. With the same aim of supporting new & emerging voices…
The smoke from her cigarette dispersed to reveal the stars, scattered everywhere in a background of spilled ink, as if someone had thrown confetti upside down and they’ve settled in the sky instead of the ground. She took in another puff and released it as cold wind pierced on her face, and she closed her eyes.
She wished she had someone to share this moment with.
She thought of her husband, so far away physically, and that even if he was here, he would still be so far away, emotionally. She thought of her daughter, too young still to consciously appreciate intangible things, and she wondered if maybe, for right now at least, that that was a good thing.
She pulled her jacket in and gave herself a hug.
The remnants of the smoke from the cigarette she had stubbed out with the heel of her black boots lingered as she stood there, looking up.
She saw the stars again, Cassiopeia, Orion’s Belt, Gemini, or maybe Leo. What would they say to her if they could talk? What would she say back to them if she could listen?
The brightest one blinked, and she knew.
That night, as the stars scattered in the spilled ink sky, as if someone had thrown confetti upside down and they’ve settled in the sky instead of the ground, she heard herself make a vow to find this moment again, to be part of something so big and celestial again, some day, alone.
A lone dog howled and for the first time, she realised that she didn’t feel scared anymore.
Another piece with compelling atmosphere from you, Lisha: your ability to place a small real moment into storytime (and here again I see and enjoy a repetition of phrasing at the start and end). I got the same pleasure from your woman (your?) coming to terms with something huge in that solitary outdoor moment that I get from that unsettling but also beautiful passage in Lawrence’s Sons and Lover, when Mrs Morrell - pregnant with the child who will become the novel’s main character - is locked outside at night by her drunken husband. Do you know that book, that passage? I want to go get my copy of it down from the shelf. And I love that - when good writing received here connects up with other writers/stories I admire.
Oh Tanya, your feedback means the world to me, thank you! I have Sons and Lovers tucked in somewhere, I don't remember reading it, but I will now. I love building this "to read" stack next to me from hearing other writers' recommendation of them, going through them one by one, savouring them like a forbidden snack. Yes, the woman is me, just thought I'd try writing in a different perspective this time. Thanks again, Tanya.
Even the first time, still innocent, I bargain with the future. With each step on my morning walk to work I silently implore the universe to make good on its promise.
I tell myself that this will be my talent, delivering babies will finally be the sport I excel at. But there is a niggling doubt. I read the complications sections of the pregnancy books with avid attention – this problem is rare, that complication is vanishingly unlikely. Yet somehow I feel an affinity. This seems like a portent when the baby is inexplicably lost on the cusp of the second trimester.
The next time my expectations are more modest. The positive test no longer feels like a commitment, more like a tentative direction of travel. I aim squarely for 24 weeks, the point of viability. I am successful in the loosest sense. My baby girls, a matching pair, are born at 24 weeks and 3 days. One of them destined to spend a tumultuous five months in neonatal care, the other will not make it that far.
When I fall pregnant again I am unexpectedly buoyant. I have experienced the very worst of this before. Whatever comes, I know I am more than equal to it. I do not consider that this time the risk will be to me and my life will hang in the balance alongside my baby’s.
Now I am raising two beautiful children but their blond curls and smiles belie everything that was lost along the way.
Oh Catherine… thank you so much for joining us as a writer for the project, and with this quietly courageous piece. There is a quality to your prose that I want to call ‘finely boned’ - the way each of your hard experiences is given shape and connected to the next so that you articulate what so many women experience but don’t have words for. ‘Tentative direction of travel’ - this moved me in particular as a way of expressing that uncertain time of pregnancy. And then that last line too…
The Japanese have 72 microseasons to describe a year: bush warblers start singing in the mountains, mist starts to linger, caterpillars become butterflies, distant thunder, frogs start singing, rotten grass becomes fireflies, self-heal withers, great rains sometimes fall, cool winds blow, thick fog descends, heat starts to die down, dew glistens white on grass, swallows leave, thunder ceases, light rains sometimes fall, north wind blows the leaves from the trees, hens start laying eggs.
A long marriage might be easier if we knew that five days after the land starts to freeze that daffodils will bloom, that there are times of lesser cold and greater cold, times of lesser heat and greater heat and manageable heat, times of lesser ripening and then grain beards and seeds. Many days marriage doesn’t feel beautiful or poetic, often feels like the life cycle of rock, lost in the squeeze of time, buried, pressured, explosive, burning, resurfacing, melting, flowing out of control. But maybe it is a poem, long, difficult to understand, even to the author, open to interpretation. Marriages thicken and thin just like ice, times of glistening and withering, ceasing and thundering, times when sun reflects and blinds, then sparkles.
Sheila, you can't imagine the synchronicity of this wise, wise piece from you arriving with me this morning. A fairly rare and completely unforseen falling out with my husband had us both speaking to one another without our usual care and measure. I see now that we were behaving like the two blind moles in the Plath poem 'bitten by a bad nature'! And so your perspective of marriage as geological time will help me be the one to go slow and be the weight-bearer today...
Tanya, So lovely to hear that. I am an outpatient therapist at a local community agency. I primarily only do individual therapy but occasionally will work with a couple. I happened to mention this to my husband once and he started chuckling as I tend not to be the best communicator with him, tend to hold it in. We both grew up around too much yelling, both conflict avoidant and working on changing that as we age. Long partnerships are quite a ride. Thanks as always for your response. So appreciated. And I want to look up that poem now!
On my seventh birthday I was given a grey school bag with a small red flowery print, a watercolour set, a miniature frying pan, a book called “Lenin and children” and lots of promises of bright future. They said a big girl like me shouldn’t play with toys anymore. I will be going to school soon. They said it’s the beginning of my life and I must take it seriously.
At first, I was excited. My life would change. I thought I would feel different… good…better… for being grown-up, but nothing has changed. I felt the same little girl.
“You need to learn letters and numbers like a big girl.”
“Get off that tree! You are a big girl now!”
“Big girls don’t have dirty nails.”
“Big girls don’t waste their time.”
“How old are you? Oh, you are a big girl now, you’ll have to look after your parents soon.”
If I’m so big, why am I still going to bed early? Why am I not allowed to go outside on my own? Why do I have to do what I’m told? Why can I never argue? They do it all the time. They think I don’t notice that, but I do. I watch and I listen, and I spy on them whenever I can. I try to understand. They say I’m the lucky one. All the wars and revolutions have ended now. But at night when I pretend to be asleep, they talk about dangerous times, uncertainties, threats, and other scary words I don’t understand.
Mama says that “there is always the right time for everything”, but nobody wants to tell me when this “right time” comes. How would I know when it’s here? Mama promises that I would.
How moving these ongoing glimpses of your life in that other country/culture. I feel I am being privileged to see parts of what may be a much longer narrative, and I'm pleased that this project is a way for you to share them in the meanwhile. You take the reader straight to the heart of your life back then.... https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#elena
A question posed by a person that, until that night, I’d never met. A blind date. The pair of us squeezed into a corner of Le Bateau in Ashley Cross. Too many drinks. Balancing on tiny stools. Hemmed in by the chink of glasses, laughter, and bodies in going-out clothes. A normal Friday night. Except it wasn’t. Was it?
Looking back, you had no reason to ask. Not then. You were well. Had been well for years. The ghosts of cancer were a distant memory that only returned, I came to learn, in your screaming nightmares. But you knew it would be back. And you wanted to know that I’d be there. I said “Yes” without a thought. Because no thought was needed.
Five years on, when the diagnosis came, you held my hand and told me that I didn’t need to stay, could walk away. You wouldn’t blame me. You’d understand.
Treatment was brutal. Life changing. When you couldn’t talk I tried to be your words. When speech returned, I dressed, fed and bathed you. On excursions to get food, I’d sit in my car and rage, red-faced and snotty-nosed, against the unfairness of it all. But you survived.
People think you’re unlucky. But they don’t know. They only see the multi-coloured pills you need to take. The telltale symptoms that have us scuttling to the hospital for tests. The endless wait for results. They don’t see the joy that each day brings, or hear the farts that still make us laugh like kids.
Twenty years ago. Doesn’t time fly? I made you a promise in a sticky-floored bar, then you walked me to my car and kissed my cheek.
Jane, I read this and then sat and cried for a while afterward. So much love communicated in these lines. Just beautiful - the quick-made and enduring bond between you and your partner; how you have expressed it here in story. Thank you so much. Your link is as follows, and do please let me know via here if you have a website or social media account you'd like me to link to on your name in the piece so that your readers can learn more about you. It's not at all a requirement of course, only an extra if you'd like to make use of it. Very best, Tanya x
Thank you, Tanya. I'm sorry I made you cry, especially on a Friday. No one should cry on a Friday! I've only just started writing about my life with my partner. I hope you don't mind me posting here again in the future. There's nothing like reading other people's great writing, and being given a prompt, to get the words flowing. My Website is janevadams.com Twitter: @WildlifeStuff and thanks again, for your encouragement. Jx
But its not fair. Whoever told you life was fair? Mrs. George tried to teach us fairness in reception class, 1972, Y-Bont-Faen Primary School. You must wait your turn to pour imaginary tea, to make pretend cakes, to snuggle into the corner of the Wendy house with your best friend, just the two of you. It’s fair to let others take turns, to bargain,5 minutes for me, then it’s all yours. How about you have the bike and I have that doll? And when you’ve run out of promises and it’s all too hard, I’ll take that unfair cuddle with Mrs. George, just me on her lap, held tight, legs dangling and arms all warm and soft.
Who ever said life was fair?
Make friends break friends
I can’t make it, not today, sorry
Bloody black dog of depression moving in again
Let things be, just as they are, in this moment
This is where stillness comes from
But it’s not fair
Expectations
What life promises to be
What the day holds what a lifetime holds
Like a marriage with two wives
Like waking up to blue sky in your tent only for a raging storm to hit later
Like that Christmas morning when you’re so sure you have that new bike
Like the quiet house you were certain would be filled with kids, animals, family, friends, life
Like a life that isn’t the one you bargained for
Stillness comes not when the world is quiet but when we accept things just as they are for now, in this moment.
So here’s the stillness, the acceptance of the self and of my life. The life that’s so different to the one I thought was promised, I imagined as a little girl. The life that’s given me times I thought I couldn’t bear ,but also riches I could never have dreamed up.
This is stunning, Louise. Its insistent rhythm, which I knew within two lines was going to deliver me somewhere very different than where I began. Thank you so much for contributing another strong and moving piece to one of the monthly themes. Here is you link for your July story. Tan x https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#LouiseStead
Ps: Please remind me if there is a website or social media account you'd like me to link your name to so your readers can find out more about you. Not at all a requirement, only an extra there for any contributors who would like that! Tx
Thanks so much for the feedback . I’m feeling so inspired to write here & have shared with friends too which is still new territory but now I’ve done it I’m on a roll! No socials to link to at the moment.
Yes - I’ve just kissed my now 14 year old son (a head taller than me) & my 12 year old girl before they set off on their daily walk to school. Thank you, as always, for reading these extracts - & writing such beautiful tales in turn.
It's strange that you should write about the bargains we make. Ten years ago, newly diagnosed with metastases, I remember saying "10 years. 10 years would be amazing". And here we are, as if some greater force had heard me and kept me to that bargain.
Now I'm bargaining again. Two-thirds of a life? Yes, I'll take that. A week of pain and fatigue for 2 weeks of relative normality. That seems fair.
Half a life? Yes, I'd take that. A third, a quarter...
How small would I go? What sliver of life would I hold on to? A finger-nail, like the smallest imaginable crescent moon? Would that be enough? A pinprick of life?
We'll see.
How small would I go? This stays with me. What a question. Like Sodom and Gomorrah... If one righteous man... Such tenacity to live a slow life... Each minute at a time.
My hand has been resting in the center of my chest since I read this. There’s something about that fingernail—“like the smallest imaginable crescent moon”—that is just so arresting, and the question of how little is still enough. I shall be sitting with this for a good long while. Sending love and strength to you, too….
Sarah that's so powerful. Thankyou
Sarah thank you again for this powerful contribution to this month’s theme. Here is your link… Do invite any friends you have who are hesitant to share their words but want to. I feel this is a safe space for them Tx
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#SarahConnor
Sarah, I find your writing so compelling. I won’t be able to make the story page on the book website for a few days yet this month but when I can I will send you your link as before. Thank you so much. Tx
Sarah, I found this really powerful. Your bargaining with yourself reminded me of those every day bargains we make (well, I think others do too!),one more biscuit, one less glass of wine, a longer walk, more time for a loved one.
But your bargains were so much bigger but also impossible.... I'm rambling but wanted to respond!
Hi Tanya, thank you for sharing and giving us the space to risk it in!!!
As I lay here looking out at the swaying bamboo outside my window I am trying to remember promisers made and bargains struck. It is like looking through muslin in the sun. I am waiting for the memories to take shape the colours to deepen, the stories to come. Bargains, stones and jewellery come to mind. A long time ago whilst paddling in the lower lake in Glendalough I saw a shiny object winking in the sun lit water. I picked it up and beheld a small brooch. A hand made pin clasp faced up and when I turned it around the most delicate inlay of flowers made from Mother of Pearl lay in the palm of my hand. An object of real beauty and days gone by. I later learned it was from the Victorian era and I have always felt a connection with some lady who paddled with her full skirts hiked high who bent to pick a stone and dropped her brooch for me to find. It has been one of my most precious possessions more valuable to me than any eye popping jewels. Many moons later when my dear friend Isabel was moving to live in Trieste I felt the significance of the distance that was going to come between us and how life can fade the consistency of friendship. As I had a fear of flying I knew it would be a very long time until we would sit drink coffee, share our thoughts, ideas, creativity and hugs so I made a bargain with Isabel when I loaned her my brooch! To be brought back in her own time. A few years later Isabel, my brooch and our bond were reunited. This beautiful simple little object has been our bargaining touchstone.
How beautiful. What a lovely story - including your imagined Victorian lady - how amazing that that brooch should find you, and connect you to your friendship.
I love the waiting for the memories to take shape, the stories to come idea. Ive done the same with each theme, mulled the word over, become a bit obsessed with it til something finds itself onto a page. Really enjoyed the connection between all three women in your story.
Love this. A trysting object for the heart.
Such connection over so many miles....and that image: the woman in skirts bent over the water, losing her brooch but gaining a stone, and you so many years later. If I was a fiction writer I'd attempt a short story perhaps! Beautiful contribution, Louise.
Louise - so so beautiful. The find, the exchange, how you’ve written about it. Thank you again! Here is your link. Tx
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#LouiseNewman
Louise! How beautiful - thank you. I won’t be able to make the story page on the book website for a few days yet this month but when I can I will send you your link as before. Thank you so much. Tx
Another achingly beautiful extract from you, Tanya. I'm continuing to process it, read it. I tried to recall a promise or promises I've made to someone else or others, and I came up blank rather oddly...which makes me think I've been trying to hard. So I wrote about promises to myself, but I am now thinking of the difference between making promises to oneself vs another and how they each have their own specific gravity, different than the other.
**********************************
The Secret to Survival
Eventually I make promises to myself because there’s certainly no bargaining as she tells me, nor after. I’ve been sick for double digit years and fought so hard to know what in the first place. Asking the Universe for a fairy tale healing via celibacy or turning towards God and church every Sunday is pointless. I am sick; a fact as immutable as the white walls in this exam room. And she tells me IT is here to stay.
IT is
autoimmune fire in the spine with bum hip shoulder elbow finger knee and toe joints tin man mornings sleepless nights a battery too low to talk or eat or dress a heart’s dance that needs watching ribs that become a wall without flex as achilles burn and eyes turn red and go blind without hourly drops it is all my days however long or short they stretch because there’s no magic pill just band aids
Over the years we apply and remove one band aid after another, sometimes modulating the peaks and valleys of fatigue and pain and sometimes not. Eventually I learn the secret to survival. Eventually I realize, decide: I must come first.
I promise me:
No more people who demand, dismiss, or tie me in knots. Sadly, this goes for family, too.
It’s okay to say no, to balance the ratio of shoulds to wants, to revel in slowness without guilt. The world can rush around me like a stream around a stone as I sit look hear and feel; sleep.
I’ll find different ways of loving old loves like trail and water, with compression sleeves and trekking poles and flotation devices; and I’ll adjust time, loving more or less depending on the energy I’ve got for the day because sick time is different than healthy time. In Chronic World 24 usable energy hours do not exist, nor 12; sometimes not even 2.
Note: pledges subject to modification
Amy, this by you speaks to me so deeply and urgently. I’m having another pain flare that makes walking hard again when I’ve had so few weeks back out in the world walking slow & alone. And it’s simply beautiful writing too.
I won’t be able to make the story page on the book website for a few days yet this month but when I can I will send you your link as before. Thank you so much. Tx
The most important thing: take care of you. Sending light and ease across the miles… -AM
Dear Amy. I read your words over & again. Thank you for them - here is your link. Tx
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#AmyMillios
Acceptance, agency - so important in managing chronic illness. Pain is so hard. This is such a strong piece of writing. Sending you love and strength to cope with this.
Oh Amy! You have put into words the experience and world of being in pain! I relate and applaud you. So well written.
Thank you for reading, Louise....and for such a lovely comment. I always hope that whatever I write contains some mark of truth for others, because then it becomes larger and not just about me.
I loved this: "It’s okay to say no, to balance the ratio of shoulds to wants, to revel in slowness without guilt." Brave writing and, I know, hard to articulate, but you've done it. Thanks
Promises to ourselves are so important aren't they, and maybe the hardest to keep?
Tanya: I meant to write tin woman not tin man.... Didn't want to delete and repost.
Noted for when I make the page for July!
Amy such courage... Thankyou
Thank you for reading, Jean. Means so much..
“I, Jean, take you M., for my lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this time forward, for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…”
We had an insurance policy that we always laughed about. It ended ‘or prior death’.
‘Don’t you dare die,’ I used to say.
That December, for some obscure reason, I decided that the Christmas present would be seven small gifts, one to be opened each month until his birthday on June 10th. It was great fun choosing them, from a mug from Barter Books, the huge second hand bookshop in Alnwick, with a promise of coffee by their roaring fire, to theatre tickets and a pre-performance dinner.
Christmas day was a bit strange. The excitement of seeing someone’s face as they open their gifts was on hold. ‘Hmm. Got that wrong,’ I thought. But he loved the first one and as Christmas was tidied away, six more gifts sat on the table in the bedroom unopened. 10th of January and the first surprise was revealed and appreciated.
However, there is no good way to reveal unwelcome news. Random blood test. Prostrate. Cancer. Aggressive. So followed rounds of appointments, tests, scans, more appointments. We were the fortunate recipients of a company health care scheme that speeded up the processes, the prognosis for prostate cancer was optimistic and we had a promise – ‘in sickness and in health’.
I asked our children the other day, how they had felt.
‘It was great timing. I was walking down Kentish Road on the way to work. Fortunately, my colleague was an ex-nurse and could reassure me!’
‘I overheard you talking.’
Surgery came and went. The insurance policy matured and we benefitted. There were secondary’s that responded to treatment. It did not spread. ‘Prior death’ had to wait. Other consequences were manageable. When we were sad, I always said, ‘I’d rather you were alive.’ And there were the presents to open.
Would prior knowledge have made any difference to the promise? I was not always full of compassion – there was fear, frustration, annoyance even… Sickness does not send a calling card asking if it is convenient to call, or ring ahead to say it is on the way. And for some, a promise may be better withdrawn. But here we are. ‘‘Til death us do part.’
Jean
Jean - what a compelling piece from you again this month. I forgot everything else around me from the first line to the last. Thank you for being part of this undertaking, and trusting me & fellow subscribers with your true stories. Here is your link... Tx
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#JeanWilson
Thanks so much for your encouraging words.
Dear Tanya,The image of you 2 sitting there, the space between you, the subtleties of your exchange over such an emotive subject, is so clear. I felt a chill of fear, of a promise made that would then hold you. (So, so happy to hear that this was years ago and you have 2 beautiful kids now.) Loved the interview yesterday. It prompted me to write this, Tamsin
..............
I took it as a promise of love.
It was my first day’s walking in the hot, dry autumn of Navarre. The way wound round a field of full-throated sweetcorn taller than me. They rustled sweet whispers as I went past, but of course it was in Spanish and my ear hadn’t acclimatised yet. As I rounded the corner I saw a solitary figure, standing still, leaning on a stick. I checked behind me to see who he was waiting for and the road was empty. It was me.
He seduced with Mozart and oysters. He kissed with tongued passion, and the lovemaking left me trembling. I texted my friend, ‘Oh that’s what they mean when they say French men are the best lovers!’ As we trekked, he told me about his wife leaving him and I said my husband had done the same. He listed his girlfriends, and I confessed mine. We spoke the language of lovers.
As the days became months, he took photos of graffiti which said je t’aime, he became increasingly jealous when I smiled at other men, sang to me while we walked, and dragged our hostel mattresses onto the floor so we could sleep side-by-side. I once made the mistake of mentioning amour and his reaction should have been a warning, but still we were inseparable.
As winter came on, we arrived, hand-in-hand, at Santiago de Compostella. We eeked it out a little longer, went to Finisterre together, the end of the earth and back. He bought me presents. Then he got the plane home to his girlfriend.
I had thought it was a pledge, but it wasn’t. It was an interlude.
Tamsin. I’ve read this several times, & always my hand goes to my heart, my throat. How deeply this speaks to experiences I and others will have had while also being so vividly particularly your own. Thank you! Do invite friends who you know would love to share words but hesitate to send them out. I feel this has become the safe communal space I hoped it could be. Here is your link. Tx
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#TamsinGrainger
Thank you Tanya, I certainly will. Is it OK to contribute each month? I heard you say that it was a first time chance to be published. T x
Absolutely okay to contribute each month! While it’s always exciting to see a new person join - at my or your & other existing contributors’ invitations - I absolutely LOVE getting these regular surprising insights into your & others’ experiences. I love too how in just a few months of these posts, conversations are starting between contributors.
Once the book is published, I may switch from extracts & invites to simply posing a question for subscribers/readers each month. With the same aim of supporting new & emerging voices…
Txx
How well you captured all the emotions and stages of this love in so few words…really well written and the end,the last two paragraphs held so much !
Thank you very much, Louise
What a thought provoking piece Tanya! On so many levels. I am still absorbing your last sentence. Wonderful
The smoke from her cigarette dispersed to reveal the stars, scattered everywhere in a background of spilled ink, as if someone had thrown confetti upside down and they’ve settled in the sky instead of the ground. She took in another puff and released it as cold wind pierced on her face, and she closed her eyes.
She wished she had someone to share this moment with.
She thought of her husband, so far away physically, and that even if he was here, he would still be so far away, emotionally. She thought of her daughter, too young still to consciously appreciate intangible things, and she wondered if maybe, for right now at least, that that was a good thing.
She pulled her jacket in and gave herself a hug.
The remnants of the smoke from the cigarette she had stubbed out with the heel of her black boots lingered as she stood there, looking up.
She saw the stars again, Cassiopeia, Orion’s Belt, Gemini, or maybe Leo. What would they say to her if they could talk? What would she say back to them if she could listen?
The brightest one blinked, and she knew.
That night, as the stars scattered in the spilled ink sky, as if someone had thrown confetti upside down and they’ve settled in the sky instead of the ground, she heard herself make a vow to find this moment again, to be part of something so big and celestial again, some day, alone.
A lone dog howled and for the first time, she realised that she didn’t feel scared anymore.
Another piece with compelling atmosphere from you, Lisha: your ability to place a small real moment into storytime (and here again I see and enjoy a repetition of phrasing at the start and end). I got the same pleasure from your woman (your?) coming to terms with something huge in that solitary outdoor moment that I get from that unsettling but also beautiful passage in Lawrence’s Sons and Lover, when Mrs Morrell - pregnant with the child who will become the novel’s main character - is locked outside at night by her drunken husband. Do you know that book, that passage? I want to go get my copy of it down from the shelf. And I love that - when good writing received here connects up with other writers/stories I admire.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#lishazulkepli
Txx
Oh Tanya, your feedback means the world to me, thank you! I have Sons and Lovers tucked in somewhere, I don't remember reading it, but I will now. I love building this "to read" stack next to me from hearing other writers' recommendation of them, going through them one by one, savouring them like a forbidden snack. Yes, the woman is me, just thought I'd try writing in a different perspective this time. Thanks again, Tanya.
Even the first time, still innocent, I bargain with the future. With each step on my morning walk to work I silently implore the universe to make good on its promise.
I tell myself that this will be my talent, delivering babies will finally be the sport I excel at. But there is a niggling doubt. I read the complications sections of the pregnancy books with avid attention – this problem is rare, that complication is vanishingly unlikely. Yet somehow I feel an affinity. This seems like a portent when the baby is inexplicably lost on the cusp of the second trimester.
The next time my expectations are more modest. The positive test no longer feels like a commitment, more like a tentative direction of travel. I aim squarely for 24 weeks, the point of viability. I am successful in the loosest sense. My baby girls, a matching pair, are born at 24 weeks and 3 days. One of them destined to spend a tumultuous five months in neonatal care, the other will not make it that far.
When I fall pregnant again I am unexpectedly buoyant. I have experienced the very worst of this before. Whatever comes, I know I am more than equal to it. I do not consider that this time the risk will be to me and my life will hang in the balance alongside my baby’s.
Now I am raising two beautiful children but their blond curls and smiles belie everything that was lost along the way.
Oh Catherine… thank you so much for joining us as a writer for the project, and with this quietly courageous piece. There is a quality to your prose that I want to call ‘finely boned’ - the way each of your hard experiences is given shape and connected to the next so that you articulate what so many women experience but don’t have words for. ‘Tentative direction of travel’ - this moved me in particular as a way of expressing that uncertain time of pregnancy. And then that last line too…
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#catherinekernot
I hope you will write for other prompts in the collection.
Tanya xx
Thank you so much Tanya for the link and for your kind words. Looking forward to writing for some of the other prompts. x
The Japanese have 72 microseasons to describe a year: bush warblers start singing in the mountains, mist starts to linger, caterpillars become butterflies, distant thunder, frogs start singing, rotten grass becomes fireflies, self-heal withers, great rains sometimes fall, cool winds blow, thick fog descends, heat starts to die down, dew glistens white on grass, swallows leave, thunder ceases, light rains sometimes fall, north wind blows the leaves from the trees, hens start laying eggs.
A long marriage might be easier if we knew that five days after the land starts to freeze that daffodils will bloom, that there are times of lesser cold and greater cold, times of lesser heat and greater heat and manageable heat, times of lesser ripening and then grain beards and seeds. Many days marriage doesn’t feel beautiful or poetic, often feels like the life cycle of rock, lost in the squeeze of time, buried, pressured, explosive, burning, resurfacing, melting, flowing out of control. But maybe it is a poem, long, difficult to understand, even to the author, open to interpretation. Marriages thicken and thin just like ice, times of glistening and withering, ceasing and thundering, times when sun reflects and blinds, then sparkles.
Sheila, you can't imagine the synchronicity of this wise, wise piece from you arriving with me this morning. A fairly rare and completely unforseen falling out with my husband had us both speaking to one another without our usual care and measure. I see now that we were behaving like the two blind moles in the Plath poem 'bitten by a bad nature'! And so your perspective of marriage as geological time will help me be the one to go slow and be the weight-bearer today...
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#sheilaknell
Txxx
Tanya, So lovely to hear that. I am an outpatient therapist at a local community agency. I primarily only do individual therapy but occasionally will work with a couple. I happened to mention this to my husband once and he started chuckling as I tend not to be the best communicator with him, tend to hold it in. We both grew up around too much yelling, both conflict avoidant and working on changing that as we age. Long partnerships are quite a ride. Thanks as always for your response. So appreciated. And I want to look up that poem now!
On my seventh birthday I was given a grey school bag with a small red flowery print, a watercolour set, a miniature frying pan, a book called “Lenin and children” and lots of promises of bright future. They said a big girl like me shouldn’t play with toys anymore. I will be going to school soon. They said it’s the beginning of my life and I must take it seriously.
At first, I was excited. My life would change. I thought I would feel different… good…better… for being grown-up, but nothing has changed. I felt the same little girl.
“You need to learn letters and numbers like a big girl.”
“Get off that tree! You are a big girl now!”
“Big girls don’t have dirty nails.”
“Big girls don’t waste their time.”
“How old are you? Oh, you are a big girl now, you’ll have to look after your parents soon.”
If I’m so big, why am I still going to bed early? Why am I not allowed to go outside on my own? Why do I have to do what I’m told? Why can I never argue? They do it all the time. They think I don’t notice that, but I do. I watch and I listen, and I spy on them whenever I can. I try to understand. They say I’m the lucky one. All the wars and revolutions have ended now. But at night when I pretend to be asleep, they talk about dangerous times, uncertainties, threats, and other scary words I don’t understand.
Mama says that “there is always the right time for everything”, but nobody wants to tell me when this “right time” comes. How would I know when it’s here? Mama promises that I would.
How moving these ongoing glimpses of your life in that other country/culture. I feel I am being privileged to see parts of what may be a much longer narrative, and I'm pleased that this project is a way for you to share them in the meanwhile. You take the reader straight to the heart of your life back then.... https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#elena
Thank you, Tanya. Very haunted place it is, that other life xx
“Will you look after me when I get ill?”
A question posed by a person that, until that night, I’d never met. A blind date. The pair of us squeezed into a corner of Le Bateau in Ashley Cross. Too many drinks. Balancing on tiny stools. Hemmed in by the chink of glasses, laughter, and bodies in going-out clothes. A normal Friday night. Except it wasn’t. Was it?
Looking back, you had no reason to ask. Not then. You were well. Had been well for years. The ghosts of cancer were a distant memory that only returned, I came to learn, in your screaming nightmares. But you knew it would be back. And you wanted to know that I’d be there. I said “Yes” without a thought. Because no thought was needed.
Five years on, when the diagnosis came, you held my hand and told me that I didn’t need to stay, could walk away. You wouldn’t blame me. You’d understand.
Treatment was brutal. Life changing. When you couldn’t talk I tried to be your words. When speech returned, I dressed, fed and bathed you. On excursions to get food, I’d sit in my car and rage, red-faced and snotty-nosed, against the unfairness of it all. But you survived.
People think you’re unlucky. But they don’t know. They only see the multi-coloured pills you need to take. The telltale symptoms that have us scuttling to the hospital for tests. The endless wait for results. They don’t see the joy that each day brings, or hear the farts that still make us laugh like kids.
Twenty years ago. Doesn’t time fly? I made you a promise in a sticky-floored bar, then you walked me to my car and kissed my cheek.
Jane, I read this and then sat and cried for a while afterward. So much love communicated in these lines. Just beautiful - the quick-made and enduring bond between you and your partner; how you have expressed it here in story. Thank you so much. Your link is as follows, and do please let me know via here if you have a website or social media account you'd like me to link to on your name in the piece so that your readers can learn more about you. It's not at all a requirement of course, only an extra if you'd like to make use of it. Very best, Tanya x
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#JaneAdams
Thank you, Tanya. I'm sorry I made you cry, especially on a Friday. No one should cry on a Friday! I've only just started writing about my life with my partner. I hope you don't mind me posting here again in the future. There's nothing like reading other people's great writing, and being given a prompt, to get the words flowing. My Website is janevadams.com Twitter: @WildlifeStuff and thanks again, for your encouragement. Jx
Bargains
But its not fair. Whoever told you life was fair? Mrs. George tried to teach us fairness in reception class, 1972, Y-Bont-Faen Primary School. You must wait your turn to pour imaginary tea, to make pretend cakes, to snuggle into the corner of the Wendy house with your best friend, just the two of you. It’s fair to let others take turns, to bargain,5 minutes for me, then it’s all yours. How about you have the bike and I have that doll? And when you’ve run out of promises and it’s all too hard, I’ll take that unfair cuddle with Mrs. George, just me on her lap, held tight, legs dangling and arms all warm and soft.
Who ever said life was fair?
Make friends break friends
I can’t make it, not today, sorry
Bloody black dog of depression moving in again
Let things be, just as they are, in this moment
This is where stillness comes from
But it’s not fair
Expectations
What life promises to be
What the day holds what a lifetime holds
Like a marriage with two wives
Like waking up to blue sky in your tent only for a raging storm to hit later
Like that Christmas morning when you’re so sure you have that new bike
Like the quiet house you were certain would be filled with kids, animals, family, friends, life
Like a life that isn’t the one you bargained for
Stillness comes not when the world is quiet but when we accept things just as they are for now, in this moment.
So here’s the stillness, the acceptance of the self and of my life. The life that’s so different to the one I thought was promised, I imagined as a little girl. The life that’s given me times I thought I couldn’t bear ,but also riches I could never have dreamed up.
This is stunning, Louise. Its insistent rhythm, which I knew within two lines was going to deliver me somewhere very different than where I began. Thank you so much for contributing another strong and moving piece to one of the monthly themes. Here is you link for your July story. Tan x https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#LouiseStead
Ps: Please remind me if there is a website or social media account you'd like me to link your name to so your readers can find out more about you. Not at all a requirement, only an extra there for any contributors who would like that! Tx
Thanks so much for the feedback . I’m feeling so inspired to write here & have shared with friends too which is still new territory but now I’ve done it I’m on a roll! No socials to link to at the moment.
Oh, Tanya. And now you have the results of that promise. What painful joy.
Yes - I’ve just kissed my now 14 year old son (a head taller than me) & my 12 year old girl before they set off on their daily walk to school. Thank you, as always, for reading these extracts - & writing such beautiful tales in turn.
This should be read every morning… a quiet pledge. Also loved the ending image!
How fierce and loving! And that gorgeous image at the end! Thank you! Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-on-promises/#moniquekennedy
Txxx