Dark, Light, Fight, Flight

Pounding head, racing heart
Anxiety, fear, continued concerns
What more will be expected of me?
Will I be able to get everything done properly?

Wracked sobs, swollen eyes
Exhaustion, sadness, depressive despair
Why is everything so damn hard?
When will something just go right for a change?

Black fog clouds my mind
The cataclysmic abyss calls
The deafening silence of the Void
Hails a ceremonious welcome

Video call, smiling faces
Happiness, joy, loving warmth
I wish I could slow time
Just to see the longer and talk some more

Hot bath, snowy bubbles
Calm, tender, relaxation
This feels like therapy
A reflective moment of me-time

Light filters into my thoughts
The awful shadows hide
The challenging heaviness lingers, clinging
But hope springs eternal

© Priscilla Anne Fick – Reflections of a Misfit

Godzilla, Axilla, Who Cares, It is Sore!

I have a cysty boil thingy in my armpit. It is medically called a folliculitis axilla, but to me it feels like a giganticus godzilla. I cannot begin to describe the discomfort I’m still feeling after having been to the doctor last Friday. By then I’d already had this nuclear sea monster egg for four days. One consultation, two different antibiotics, and an ointment later and I was already counting the days to this month’s payday. What I didn’t bargain on is the meds being almost finished and zero relief. This has to be one of the most painful things I’ve had, aside from a Bartholin’s cyst and an appendicitis (not at the same time, thank goodness!) and Loskop that I am, I left my meds at home today.

I think I’m just a cyst magnet. I’ve had teratomas removed from my ovaries four times. If you’re squeamish, don’t Google what they are. The first one I had, had teeth and hair, and the last one removed five years ago had embryonic tissue. Ironic when you consider I’ve never been pregnant. I find them fascinating, even though they’re quite gross. Then I’ve had two Bartholins cysts too. Again, if you’re easily nauseated or one of those people that grabs towards your own dangly bits when someone gets kicked in theirs on the TV, don’t Google what they are either. Oh, and then let’s not forget about the mice in my boobs last October.

Okay, that’s enough for now. I’m going to have my lunch which is carrot, sweet potato, chickpea, and coriander soup (before you ask me for the recipe, it’s out of a tin), with some toast.

Keeping Going

I’ve been out of isolation for almost three weeks. I’m grateful to report that I am getting stronger every day. The insane, rib-cracking coughing is almost finally at an end, but I still get tired very quickly. An hour on the beach on Saturday ended with me having a three-hour sleep when I got home. Every night I’ve switched off my light around 21h00, which for me is early.

A few things have changed since I took ill:

A ‘Mouse’ Squatting in my Boob

I’ve always been aware of #breastcancerawareness but after this, I am a lot more serious about it. Ladies (and gents), please check your boobs for irregularities regularly. If you don’t know how, speak to a local healthcare practitioner.

It was a normal Monday morning shower. Until it wasn’t anymore. There I was, warm water cascading down over me, yet I was ice-cold with an indescribable feeling of dread; I had felt something unusual in my right boob – a hard lump. Could it be cancer? Nah, surely not?! But maybe… no, don’t be stupid! There’s no history of breast cancer in the family…but what about on your biological father’s side? It could be cancer… you’re at that age… These are just a few of the things that milled through my head the entire day. Needless to say, I hardly slept. I kept waking up during the night poking my boob. As sure as the earth rotates on its axis the knob was still there, feeling to me to be about the size of an old one Rand coin.

Heartbreak Autopsy

Does the hurt you caused me ever sucker punch you unexpectedly?
Do you ever feel enveloped by a storm of sadness?
Do you ever wonder if I’ve wanted to die because of it?

Your broken promises are splinters of glass in my mind
“I’ll never hurt you” – the salt in my wounds

Do you ever have to stifle screams of terror at night
As the memories choke you with their icy hands
Their bony fingers squeezing the throat your lips often caressed

Silent tears flow as panic threatens to turn to hate
“I’m sorry” – the word I damn to Hell

I try to sleep to silence the voices in my head
My rest plagued by inescapable rooms
Every door I open leads to another dungeon of heartache

My bed is cold, a sanitized, steel slab
You make the Y-incision with the diamond of her engagement ring

Did she stand beside you as you cracked my ribs
To remove my still-beating heart?
Our end: your start

My First Meat-Free-Monday: Mixed Pepper Pasta

I meant to post this on Monday, 3 May, but while I was cooking, the insane need to pee immediately gripped me and as I was undoing my pants, my phone fell out of my back pocket into the toilet bowl My need to pee evaporated instantly, and all I could think of was crap, crap, CRAP!!! (no pun intended!) and then silently thanked the cleaning gods that drive me to bleach the loo every second day. At least I didn’t have to fish it out of the bowl with my hands. Needless to say, I tossed the tongs away. Next my brain said get the phone into rice straight away to give it a fighting chance at surviving the water that was slowly infiltrating its innards. Thank the Pope a colleague gifted me a bag last month. Somehow I don’t think she or I thought that an expensive bag of brown basmati rice was going to end up in a plastic Tupperware trying to dry out a phone. Why don’t the cellphone manufacturers make water resistant handsets? Because, from what I’ve heard, cellphones and toilet bowls seem to have an affinity for one another. Next I went to Elizabeth’s house, panic stricken, and tried to dry the phone with the hairdryer on a low heat, and then it went to Chante, whose sister repairs phones. My phone’s board is okay, but the screen needs to be replaced. I don’t have the money for it now, but fortunately Elizabeth has lent me a phone in the meantime. Anyhow, the intended post follows…

Dalene

Many years ago I wrote a piece about Daniel, an attendant who worked at the petrol station close to the house we lived in at the time. Today I want to share a similar story, also about a petrol attendant – her name is Dalene. She works at the station I pass daily whether on my way to work, or on my way home. I refuel there most often because I earn loyalty points with the bank if I do.

Her job is not a difficult one, but in a sense it is hard. As the seasons change, the mornings are chillier, darkness sets in earlier, and for a great deal of her shift, she is on her feet. That’s how we got talking one day – she was limping.

My Lockdown in Review

I have been reading through some of my posts that kept me sane during the hard lockdown last year. If you want to take a gander at them, the first post is here.

Part of me can hardly believe it has already been as long as that, because those first three weeks feel like a distant memory. Sometimes I wonder if they indeed did happen, because looking back now, I realize that as tough as those first-three-weeks-now-more-than-three-hundred-and-sixty-five-days have been, I’ve adapted and grown.