Silence and Bravery

I’ve been reading Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journals. She’s a writer I admire very much but I’d never read these before. A mixture of diary and lectures. Her writing gives me the courage to keep finding words for what is happening and to keep speaking them out loud. We may have stopped saying the word cancer in a whisper but there is still that air of horror around it. It’s easy to feel like an outcast, like you are a walking reminder of mortality. Kids this is what happens if you spend a wayward life drinking and working in television. I stopped doing both. Too late. And also probably only small contributions to my current predicament.

Arriving in Cornwall I feel grounded. Hitting the ground with a gentle bump. I consciously booked somewhere that I could see the sea from my bed knowing that I might be spending some time in it. I need to be by water at the moment. Some of the manic edge of the last few weeks has worn off. I exhausted myself cramming in experience before medication started. Now that it has, I feel the need to be quiet and stand still looking at the sea barefoot. I only had two out of three drugs on Tuesday at the hospital but I feel the effects. It’s a bit like being sleepless mixed with what it might feel like to swallow a tub of MSG and be on speed. But knackered and a bit hot. The kids are amazing. They are happy just to be here and mooch by the beach, paddle, read. We are on half speed. I am trying to tap into my inner teenager and laze about which I find hard. Comically I came here planning to write. I’d put my laptop on charge before I left the house for the hospital but then had to go straight to the station and get kids to bring my bags. No laptop. The lack of additional technology has taken a burden off me and forced me to read. I will not wish myself more time with technology on my deathbed.

I’ve started writing a book. The blog is helping me limber up and find a voice for this experience in quite a free way. But a book is harder. I cannot find a voice to address an imaginary reader. It makes me inauthentic. Perhaps because I have no headspace for an imaginary ‘you’ the reader right now. Having a new incurable illness is quite a singular, selfish thing. Survival. It is, I’m afraid, all about me. This is hard to admit. As women we spend a lot of time and energy worrying about and doing things for others. I err towards the selfish as a mother but have turned this into a whole philosophy of bringing up self sufficient children. And they are. But I try to be mindful right now that they need fun and nice things to happen and reassurance. Nevertheless I am the one fighting for my survival. For me and for them.

There is a lot of talk about bravery in cancer by which I think people mean fear. Really they want to say ‘are you not afraid of dying’. But they say ‘you are so brave’. I don’t object to this as much as I know some other people with cancer do. We like to acknowledge this as a quality but really what choice is there. You still have to stand up and get dressed in the morning. I can’t hide or cower or box myself into a corner and cry all the time. We keep on keeping on. I want to do it out loud. And I do think I am brave but not by having cancer but by saying out loud ‘hey I’m not dead yet and I have living to do and so do you.’ Do it well. Keep on. Get up.

Audre Lorde’s book is getting ruined by all the corners of pages I have turned. She writes ‘I began to recognise a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that whilst it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into perspective gave me great strength. I was going to die sooner or later whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.’

There is so much in her work that is right for our time. My day one thought on being diagnosed was ‘what would you do if you knew you were dying and could get away with anything’. But sadly the only thing that ran through my head as Trump started dishing out his executive brain farts on DEI and all the tech bros trotted along like little handbag dogs was ‘I’m going to dress up as a giant chicken and protest against Meta and Google’. My boss didn’t get the chicken so I parked that one. But what would you do? I have been playing with the idea of silence versus speaking out. Maybe the former is more elegant but if I do anything well or at least habitually it is to communicate. Not always well, but I am committed to trying!

My doom scrolling this week has been obsessed by silences and how people are silenced. I watch videos of people being rendered by ICE in the US. Brave neighbours and lawyers standing up for them. I was jaw droppingly horrified by the lack of voice given to trans people and trans parents in the media yesterday in the UK. Even my beloved BBC let me down. Where the fuck were you? Why the silence. Why the silencing? You have ONE JOB and that’s balanced coverage. But there was a photo of JKfuckingRowling so hey. Well done. Don’t laugh at what’s happening in the US because there are plenty of forces moving in this country that would like to do the same. Call it out. We only have our voices and our actions. Never mind bravery. Embrace the fear because we actually should acknowledge that some things are fucking scary. But scariest of all is our own silence. Trust your instincts on a daily basis about what is wrong and what is right and shout it out.

OK. It’s time to go and stand with my toes in the sand and stare at the sea. If I don’t my anger will get the better of me.