‘I once told God I didn’t want to be alive anymore’
Okay, so sometimes I am glad that He doesn’t answer all my prayers…
Exactly a year ago today, a policeman knocked on my door. When I heard him announce his arrival through the intercom system, I was instantly alarmed. I can only imagine it was the kind of calling my mum might have dreaded during my (only slightly wild) teenage years. Only I’m not a teenager at all. I’m in my thirties and haven’t lived at home for years. So why were the ‘Feds’ at my door?
I actually thought I’d written about this before on here but just went back to check and nada. So, to explain, I always find Christmases tough. We didn’t celebrate Christmas growing up so it was kind of a non-event, but then I married into a family who loved that festive season and as I take any excuse to celebrate anyway, I was quickly drawn in. Fast forward to the divorce and suddenly I didn’t have that default family to “go home” to at the end of December. My family is… let’s just say we’re pretty dysfunctional. So it’s always awkward for me when well-meaning friends and colleagues ask, ‘Are you going home for Christmas?’
I don’t have a “home” anymore, not in that sense, so I usually just lie and make up some excuse. Everyone is so happy at that time of year (including me) so I get away with being vague and no one picks up on it.
But you’ll know the above if you already read this essay. The reason I’m bringing it up again is because in January 2022, the loneliness of that Christmas season plus a startling reality of the horrendous year I’d had with cancer in 2021, hit me. I talk in my book, Still Standing – 100 Lessons From An ‘Unsuccessful’ Life, about how it takes a while for grief to catch up with me. I’m so busy doing; trying to get on with life as fast as possible. Back to joy and far from pain. It’s when life suddenly gets quiet that I panic because then it all catches up with me and I have to face reality. So many people are touched by cancer every day and even though I limit my memory of being a long-term hospital resident to my comedic escape down the service staircase to get to a shop (I walked about 14 flights down) when there was no fruit on the ward and I was told I couldn’t leave; mostly, it was hell.
One night I cried out to God and said I wanted to die. I was cold and tired, sick and in pain. My spirit was literally out of hope and I couldn’t understand the point of it all. (Sometimes it’s good when God doesn’t answer our prayers, right?) It was the worship music I put on my headphones that got me through that night. It drowned out my inner trauma as well as the terrifying screams of the other patients on my ward.
That’s just a small part of my personal journey with cancer that I refused to acknowledge once I decided to discontinue with the chemotherapy treatments I had been assigned. I packed up my stuff, drove back to my new home in the Cotswolds, and started an intense yoga practice called MySore which started at 6:45am. I know. So by January I was not only physically exhausted, I was emotionally still totally drained. So on 10 January 2022, I didn’t get up for work or turn on my phone or laptop. ‘I just need a little sleep’, I told myself. I hadn’t eaten for a day or so; I honestly can’t remember now but I wasn’t hungry, just tired. I told myself that no one would miss me and that I wasn’t really needed anyway. It would all be fine if I could just. Sleep.
For reference, I take screen sabbaticals all the time so this wasn’t unusual for me. But the next day, the policeman informed me that my colleagues had been so worried that they’d called the police. Apparently the same bobby had come round up the day before but I hadn’t answered. With this new info I turned on my phone to missed calls and messages not only from colleagues but, unrelated, messages from friends asking how I was and wanting to catch up and hang out with me. It was a big wake up call to me, if I’d been in any doubt at all. I was needed*. There was (and is) a reason for me to be here. I don’t like assigning labels (to myself) but in being more kind to myself, I have noticed a similar pattern of what is Winston Churchill apparently referred to as “Black Dog”. (I love dogs by the way, sorry if yours is black.) I guess it’s not unusual for someone who has such extreme highs to also be a person of extreme lows. It’s also scary to note how much darker your low can be when you let negative words play around in your head.
So anyway, January can be tough for many and I know people who have recently lost relatives, babies and homes. It’s rare that we’re able to immediately solve our own problems or those of our friends. However, while we no longer live in the Middle Ages when there was a very real chance every day that you might not live to the end of it, I still think that to be alive is something of a miracle in itself. So if nothing else, let’s celebrate that.
If you’ve read my book, please leave a review either at Amazon or wherever you purchased it!
Tola x
*Huge thank you, by the way, if you were one of those friends who picked up on that Holy Spirit antenna and contacted me.