When I was small, we used to play the pavement game.... you know, the one where you are not allowed to step on the cracks between paving stones, or some dreaded unmentionable thing would happen.
Somewhere along the line, I must have stepped on a huge crack, and fallen straight through; finding myself, after 14 years working in a place I loved, suddenly 'between jobs' .
When I lost a breast, there was no sense of shame; of having somehow become a non person; of having let everyone down. It needed to go and that was that. Losing my job, however, has wiped away my identity; rendering me paralysed and causing me to doubt my own worth.
'Take time out' is the constant message from lovely friends and family.... ' find something new; something you really want to do' .... sage advice I'm sure. So I make new routines, go swimming, watch movies , read the books on the pile that has grown by my bed; or put the ipod on shuffle and rediscover those long lost tracks whose haunting beauty had all but faded from memory. Yet all the while I am quietly grieving for what I have lost , and for who I used to be.
When I was undergoing chemo, my well used phrase in dark moments such as these, was 'What would Tank Girl Do?' ...... Well, short of snogging a genetically engineered kangaroo; or driving a tank through my former employers' office; I am open to suggestions .
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