So today I went to see the Oncologist. She doesn't look a thing like Wilson.

Which is just as well, because in addition to the absolute indignity of having cancer, you have to get weighed right out there in the waiting room. In front of complete strangers. WTF? Like life isn't bad enough when you have breast cancer, you have to worry being fat? Honestly.

Anyway, she laid out the plan -- I start next week. Yes, I will lose my hair. Yes, I will go through menopause. Yes, I will probably get mouth ulcers. Yes, I will probably puke. Yes, I will be tired.  Jeez.

Called a friend who's just lost her mother to liver cancer. Did. NOT. Make. Me. Feel. Better. Got knee deep into wallowing when another friend appeared at the door with dinner. Whereupon I burst into snotty tears.

Fuck. This is so hard.

 (http://www.someecards.com/ Thanks Sis!!)

So now I have everyone patting my hand and converging en masse to tell me how sorry they are. I know they mean well, but I am currently trying to maintain some semblance of normality and doing things like attending Mousey's netball practice is a way I forget. I am not talking about my true mates (internet and in real life) but those women who've said hello to me on the playground maybe once and now want to pat my hand and cry on my shoulder. I want to smash them.

WTF?

If I have a relationship with you, you know it. We chat, we go for coffee, we get wildly drunk and elbow the kids aside to Singstar, we email nasty cruel jokes to each other, we take pot shots at each other's fashion sense -- sometimes all we do is email. Or post. But it's real.

It's not real to break into tears over someone who merely shares space with you outside the Kindergarten door. Seriously uncool.

And I highly doubt whether I want to call that person to tell them I am puking my guts out and I need them to pick up the kids.

The ones I call are the ones:

• who've seen me in my pyjamas at 7pm on a Sunday night,
• who've laughed at my bed-head,
• who save me a seat at Brownie meetings so I don't have to talk to the skinny seriuous mums who take this shit seriously. (Brownies gives my kid a chance to do craft and to do camping. I repeat: camping. With dirt in your food n' stuff)
• who accept that a Brie omelette prepared by a drunken friend at 11pm is a healthy meal for the road,
• who rock up and grab my kids and return them two days later when they heard the diagnosis, so I could scream and cry without worrying about anyone but me for that space of time.

The ones I bitch to are:

• the ones who've gotten my completely self-absorbed rants
• the ones who have never offered advice, just a simple 'email me'
• who send me dirty jokes or irreverent cards.

They 'get' me. That is a friend.

Click here to claim your blog on Blogged.com

(I just clicked on something and now I have that thingie). Haven't a clue what it means, I have no intention of writing over there. But hey.

I am so tired today. I slept most of today and I could go right back to bed.

Made the kids cry when I told them they had to find their school uniforms so I could wash them for tomorrow. You'd think I'd ask them to gut slice a little kittie. Oi. Sent the Boy out for dinner, cos hey, I ain't cooking. I am so off food right now (YAY!). Except for of course, Cadbury's Fruit n' Nut. It will take more than self-pity and cancer to put me offa that, lemme tell ya.

Today's Bad Mother of the Day Award goes to... MOI, of course.

Today I taught Mouse how to kill people when playing The Sims.It gets too boring if you always play the Sims the way you are supposed to.

Good Ways to Kill Sims:

Put them in rooms but do not give them a fridge or a stove. They faint from hunger and... then they die.

Put them in a room without a toilet and watch them wee all over themselves and then get depressed... and die.

Give them a stove, no doors or windows and watch them set themselves on fire. They die.

Give them a stove, no toilet and no place to put the garbage, swarms of flies appear and... they die.

Give the Sim a nice big Turkey dinner, then build a pool, get them to go swimming, take away the pool steps and.... they drown.

Make them stand outside in a thunderstorm... they die when lightening strikes them.

Make a completely stoopid Sim attempt to fix a TV or a computer. They electrocute themselves... and they die.

Buy your Sim a Guinea pig for a pet. Don't feed or take care of the Guinea Pig. When the Sim tries to cuddle it, the Guinea Pig bites them and they get a horrible disease... and die.

Buy a  Model Rocket Launcher and set it off in the house. With luck, the house goes up in flames. Make sure you've removed the doors so you can watch them.... die.

I not sure it is so healthy to be teaching an 8 year old this, but she is laughing her socks off.

And while I am shit--faced and getting every horrible thought spewed out of my psyche --

Really.Old.People.Must.Stop.Driving.And.Meandering.About.Aimlessly.Like.They.Are.In.A.Cow.Field.

Or I will have to kill them. I will take all their change away and make them stand in anything other than the '12 items or only"queue.

Can you  believe that some of those miserable c**ts get to live to be 70+  and I might not get to live past 50? My girls will be 13 and 8 respectively. Fuck this., I am not a great person but I ma a good person.

I have never been deliberately  mean to anyone in my entire life.

I have stuck for people who were getting a raw deal.

I love my girls.

I am kind to my husbnad.

I like to shake my (considerable) booty to anything an eight yr old can dish up.

 I like to sleep sandwiched in between all my family.,

Fuck this.

And since I am unlikely to be one of them - I get to play the Breast cancer card.

Off to Google more crappy stats and smoke some more dope and ciggies -- cos what the heck,,eh?

Ya.boo.Sucks. I always thought I'd face the prospect of death like Flashman or Indiana Jones and instead I am turning into Amy Winehouse.

Oi.  (Fuck the self-pity thing is boring.) Off to sleep with the kids.,

Just help me. Take this horrible thing away.

Did you know that studies show that children up to the age of 5 don't remember their mothers? What kind of stat is that?

Well Boo-boo is tucked up in bed in the midst of where Marc and I will be, talking to herself and playing with her Littlest Pet Shop Punk pets. Her preference is the Punkified Vampire Bat. Oi.

Mousey is over at a sleepover/costume party. She went as Hannah Montana. Double Oi. My head just wants to split wide open at the amount of concentration you need in this house to nuture each girl's personality without crushing it. Do you know, I had to blow dry Mouse's hair THREE times?

How can such polar opposites come from my loins?

What fresh hell is that?

We interrupted (Boo-boo and I) our watching of the Disney Channel movie to search for Punkified Iguana who has a black and purple mohawk. She cried. I cried because Marc wasn't taking the whole thing seriously enough.

FUCK ME I AM LOSING IT.

Yeah so about me. Had a bad day today, cried alot while driving cos the kids were in the back. Punched past every remotely introspective song on the car CDs and settled on Mary J. Blige.

Googled some more. Wished I hadn't. Wanted to smack Marc everytime he caught me crying and said "we are going to beat this". There ain't no 'we' bub. You can be by my side and wish me well but when it comes right down to it -- this is mine, my journey alone. I go through this alone. You can be there, rub my shoulders, but in the small hours of the night when I get up and wander round the house... it's mine.

I look at the stats and know that could be me.

I look at my daughters and wonder if I will see them married with babies of their own.

I look back at my life and have regrets.

I look forward and have regrets.

This so fucking sucks.

So here I am. Back because the only place I can sort things out is here, written down.

This Tuesday I got the news that I have a particularly virulent nasty and aggressive son-of-a-bitch breast cancer. I have two totally awesome kids, finally got the whole bi-polar stuff sorted out, psycho-granny kicked the bucket (drank some champers over that one!) and now I get this 1 out of 100000 kind of breast cancer that is really fucking serious.

This has to be a joke. This is payment for accepting atheism into my life and rejecting God.

Or something.

Lists I made because I am feeling particularly morbid. Sue me, I have breast cancer.

Things I Wish I'd Done:

1. Smoked dope, got drunk and slept around in high school.
2. For that matter, slept with a WHOLE LOT MORE BLOKES.
3. On the same subject, had sex with Tyson Beckford. And Hugh Laurie. And Robert Downey Jr. And Jim Morrison. And George Clooney. (I do. not.want. to. know. nor. do. I.care.if.any.are.gay.)
4. Became a teacher.
5. Been nicer to my mother when I was just really being a narcissic self-absorbed teenager/young adult/30ish plonker.
6. Understood my dad better, earlier.
7. Paid more for shoes.
8. Dyed my  hair blond or Annie Lennox red and chopped IT.ALL.OFF.
9. Worked out what I wanted before now.
10. Been nicer to my kids when I wanted to throttle them and they never EVER deserved it.
11. Gone to Hollywood. Just to point and laugh. Really, one simply MUST.
12. Been a Size 6 for a week. I couldn't take the torture more than that. I  love to eat.
13. Relied on my instincts more and listened less to what people said.
14. Asked for help more often.
15. Bought a drum set and learned to play the drums.
16. Shot a gun. Once.
17. Jumped out of a plane.

..... more later. Promise.

My husband is in the garage crying his heart out, the kids are engrossed in "Matilda". We've told them as much as they can handle which is "mummy is sick but going to get better and we will all have to be positive blah. blah. fucking blah".

Of course we'd sweetened the deal by buying them complete new outfits -- camo hipster pants, black "I am totally gorgeous" glitter t-shirts with skulls and crossbones --- and handbags.  I am not stupid.

Mousey took it very badly. She's been aware something has been up for about a week now, not surprisingly. Boo-boo doesn't really get it. Medicine goes in, I get better. Mouse is more scared that I am lying to her and I am dying. Since I don't actually KNOW that I am NOT in fact, dying, I am avoiding the topic. I have told her about the radiation therapy and how I will be tired, and the chemo will make me sick and I might lose my hair. I talked her into helping me pick out the great big honking tattoo I am going to get on my head if I lose my hair. Something totally ludicrous, like a giant prehistoric dragonfly. She was so horrified, she wants to help. Visions of fairies or Bratz dolls or Zac Efron....

Anyway, that's me. What's up with you?

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on
the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the
Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wow. I could have written that. Well, of course I couldn't - I am not a brilliant driven white male with anti-social tendencies. Okay, I do have the anti-social tendencies.
I think of depression as an old friend. It's always there, hiding just beneath the surface of my skin, waiting for a chance to come out and turn me into some sort of dark beast. I spend most days keeping busy because the minute I let my guard down, POW! Right in the gut. It can take a careless throwaway remark, or the sight of a dear friend talking to a sworn enemy or my children bickering one too many times --- and I am lost, spiralling until I can snatch something to haul me up out of that pit. It's exhausting. And that's on anti-depressants AND mood stabilizers.

Fuck. Maybe there's a book in there somewhere.

Introverted Intuitive Feeling Judging
Well, there you go.
So my question is.... and one that my lame-o cognitive psychologist couldn't answer is....
Am I the same person on or off the drugs?
I am on Depakote, Effexor and Aropax (er... Paxil for non-aussies). That's some serious shit.

• Depakote regulates my moods, so I don't decide to volunteer for everything at Mouse's school, take on extra work, and cook a dinner party for 45. Seriously.
• Aropax stops me from jumping in front of trains, when all of the aforementioned doesn't come off just.quite.right. And I am useless and incompetent and a horrible mother and wife. And anyone would be better than me.
• Effexor allows me to sleep when I've been up and down at 4am solving the problems of the world and my household and reading like a fiend cos I can't shut my brain down long enough to get the sleep my body so desperately needs.
• Not to mention the wine. The wine on Friday nights which allows me to self-medicate long enough to feel less tense.

I tell you, my doc had me on Valium for a month and that was the absolute best. Unfortunately, it is addictive and I can... see... why. I felt normal for the first time in ages. But anyway, I am uber-mummy and superwoman and who-the-hell-cares-what-gets-me-off woman -- I refused another prescription cos above all, I don't wan to turn into some blonde-streaked tennis lady, who is medicated up to her tits, who gathers round the pool for Gin and Tonic's every Thurs and Friday, smiling vacantly at her kids and giving her husband blow jobs on his birthday. She may be not suicidal but.. Ewwww.
(That was a really long sentence, can you tell it's Friday?)
Anyway, I am finding my way. It seems to be two steps forward and one step back. The whole Who Am I question is really bugging me though.
Maybe who I am is supposed to be un-medicated.
Maybe I am supposed to go off on wild emotional rides and soar through the sky just to crash and burn.
Maybe that is who I am.
That person. The person who would be a lousy mother and a crappy mother.
Not the person who calmly deals with everything and only does her rag after two weeks of constant squabbling by the Divas. Maybe I am supposed to have blown up on Day 4.
So that's the thing that's bugging me lately.
Who the hell am I?

  

So I'd thought I'd give you a taste of what it's like when I get manic. Cos really, it could be mistaken for normal -- I am such a control freak.
Here we go:
The words are being typed on this page faster than I can physically get them out -- the spelling errors are horrendous.
My fingers are pulsing.
<<If I dint' spell checlk I would be t ypoing like this ai am typing so fast.>>
I am shouting obscure facts about music and books and other weird stuff (did you know that Duke Ellington's real name was Edward Kennedy Ellington and that a Tiger Snake isn't striped at all necessarily, and that Sting was voted the worst rock (read: popular) lyricist of all time and that my youngest daughter could break your heart in thirty pieces about thirty times a day?) at my husband who is grunting.
grunting.
And I am flying, flying, flying.
My head is full of all these huge ideas, my heart feels fit to burst, and my stomach feels full of butterflies.
I feel like I could fly. I really do. My breathing is faster than normal. I am listening to the rad
So obviously, the meds aren't working. I either have to come down off the antidepressants or try something else. Fuck this.
I really like this high. It's hard to give up.
Of course, the consequences are that deep awful hole, that black fucking pit with the slippery sides. It get harder and harder to haul myself out of it.
Not worth it. 
Not.
NOT.
Note to self: call doc on Monday.