Sunday Brunch

Don't Look Back In Anger

NO NOSTALGIA

Last night my mother was reminiscing. She has her trusted little archive of personal anecdotes. Depending on the topic, time period or person in question, we can usually predict what story will be told. We have heard them all before. Countless times.

I am not a nostalgic person. Yes, I do like period features on an old house, vintage dresses from bygone eras, and I feel perfect cake recipes don’t need experimental enhancement if they have been fine for the last hundred years. But nostalgia I loathe. I even once wrote a rather viscous (and visceral) poem about it once (the first line says: “Here I stand on the piled up stench of rotting suffering…” You catch the drift I am sure.)

Why? We asked ourselves last night. I think it is because I started out in life with a decade and a half that isn’t worth remembering. My mother had a happy childhood. I had a horrible one. I can make it look nice with tales of rescued blackbirds, chestnut foraging with my best friend Rachel (Rachel single handedly saved my childhood in that sense) or fishing trips with grand dad. I had great friends in high school. But overall it was the kind of childhood that makes me wish Dr Mirzwieak from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was real. I would make an appointment for a partial lobotomy of my memory today. I have to rigorously apply selective amnesia to save a few scraps so I can “reminisce” without having some sort of PTSD-response.

I know I am not the sum total of all my experiences, but I do wonder who I am with this “filtered” -and according to Joe Dispenza mostly false- memory. I have let go of the illusion that I am capable of processing and integrating all my trauma into a perfectly balanced whole. When I, rather desperately, day dream of simply walking out of my life and leaving everything behind, I assume that having no memory would be bliss somehow. Yes, it would mean throwing out the good with the bad, but would I really miss anything?

Jur Deitmers found out the extremely hard way. On the way to hospital for one of my scans I listened to a radio interview with Ivo Niehe, who made a documentary about him. Jur was a bright kid studying at Harvard when on a holiday break he contracted a brain infection that nearly killed him. He survived, but his memory did not.

Looking into his eyes on TV a few weeks later I am stunned by what I see. There is a purity that I don’t often experience when staring into the eyes of an adult. His story is utterly mind boggling and awe inspiring and every time I hear one of his friends or family members speak, tears well up.

When Jur speaks, a complete, reassuring calm comes over me. I believe it when I hear the voice over of Ivo Niehe recount how Jur came to a low point, where life didn’t seem worth it anymore. But he decided to choose life.

Choose life. Normally when I hear or read these words somewhere I can’t help quoting some snarky stuff from Trainspotting. Now I don’t. I believe Jur.

Ever since Jur chose life he has been in a good mood. He is also completely free of any bias, prejudice or preconceived notions. He is immune to the projections of others. When someone tells him that the thought of speaking in public is terrifying, he just shrugs it off. “Your problem. I love speaking in public so I am going to enjoy it…”

HIGHS AND LOWS

“Whatever happens, stay alive. Don't die before you're dead. Don't lose yourself, don't lose hope, don't lose direction.

Stay alive, with yourself, with every cell of your body, with every fiber of your skin.

Stay alive, learn, study, think, read, build, invent, create, speak, write, dream, design.

Stay alive, stay alive inside you, stay alive also outside, fill yourself with colors of the world, fill yourself with peace, fill yourself with hope.

Stay alive with joy.

There is only one thing you should not waste in life, and that's life itself."

~Virginia Woolf

Years ago I sat around with a couple of friends on January 1st. The year before that our house had burnt down. The way people had rallied around us had turned this traumatic low point into the highlight of the year. I had no idea how supportive and selfless people could be. Not just friends and family, but total strangers too.

The friends who saved my ass this year are a God sent. So, if I have to pick some “highs” it would be bath times in Luna and long dinners in Timisoara.

Driving with my pets for four days was also an amazing experience, so I definitely want more of that in 2025. I want to turn the next part into one long road trip! I intend to fully embrace my nomadic tendencies.

OH MY BODY

Cleaning up notes I found a list I wrote on arrival late August for things I want to heal:

Bunions (inflammation in general)

Shape strength agility feet (buy splint)

Skin rejuvenated

Hair healthy lush

Nerve pain gone scar tissue healed

Hormones balanced

Brain clarity and plasticity

Teeth whole strong beautiful (too many trips to the dentist)

Scanning body regularly

Reading it yesterday made me cry. If only this was all that needs to heal. It turns out to be so much bigger, and more complicated than that. I can and will handle it, but bloody hell I am angry. The anger is amplified by a sense of betrayal. I have spent years breathing clean air and drinking clean spring water. I do yoga, I meditate, take supplements. I talk to my body daily. Yet, I did not know. I wasn’t able to feel it. What turned me tone deaf?

The way Jur chose life, I need to choose my reality. I know I cannot fix myself rationally. That is not the right tool. But it does help me carve out a bit of space for hope, and faith. I can learn to trust my body again (and vice versa). The photo I put on Instagram (above) when I felt so much love and gratitude for my body, working the yard and putting a new roof on the outhouse, looking at it now, it suddenly feels false.

After the series of hospital visits and these bizarre little puzzle pieces not painting any clear picture, I felt other things… sadness… confusion… betrayal … fear… cruel joke even. But if what the oncologist says may be true? If these irregularities have been there for years. Then that means that with these present I was still strong enough to cut, chop and stack 10m3 of fire wood. I was feeling so energetic, that I even said it as the strongest and healthiest I have felt my entire life. I can feel like that again.

I cannot come home to this world, or even to the country I reside in. But the least, or the best, I can do is come home to myself. Belong to myself again.

ON THE HORIZON

"Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right."

~Søren Kierkegaard

When I first got diagnosed at the local hospital we all fell down a rabbit hole of impending doom and death. After the second opinion new space to breathe opened up. In one of the conversations with my cousin I said: Even with cancer I will have a new chapter.

I found the idea of the last couple of challenging years to be the last of my life simply unacceptable. This is not how my story ends.

My cousin said: What if this cancer is still part of the old chapter? And the new one, the clean slate, comes after…

Counting down to the new year it’s part of daily meditation. How do I approach this. I make space for the rage, the lingering resentments, the sense of injustice.

Every December I pick a word for the new year. 2025 is “allowance”. I allow life, love and light and yes I allow all the darkness and shadows too.

I believe in healing but toxic positivity is a pet peeve. No, I don’t have to bounce around like a happy clappy neo-hippie. I can have snotty cries, I can have foul moods. I can be close to giving up knowing I never actually will.

Health and wisdom can come from embracing the pain. Choosing and creating my new reality does not require me to be a steady beacon of patience and understanding. I am still perfectly human when utterly pissed off. I can be a grumpy bitch and still be inspired by Buddha. I can allow for my selfishness, even when I know full well my self as separate from anything or anyone is an illusion.

I will leave some stuff behind. Things from 2024 that I will not drag into 2025. In that sense I am already giving myself a clean slate.

I will change course, as yet undefined. I will put new dots on the horizon and put one foot in front of the other.

TO KEEP FROM DROWNING

I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I have been bathing in pathos. Or rather, drowning in it. Cancer has an uncanny way of reminding you of your mortality. I had to pee earlier and while on the toilet I looked at my bare feet. “How long will I have these feet?”

"Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up.

This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”

Terence McKenna

WHAT TO WATCH

Yes Christmas has to include: Annie, The Sound Of Music, Christmas Carol, The Holiday, Love Actually, A Boy Named Christmas, Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square, and the extended version of all Lord of the Rings movie (including the new series on Prime). I also urge you to watch all dating shows known to man (I wish the Dutch ones could be viewed somewhere with subtitles). I still have it on my wishlist of things to write about!

TO WHAT’S NEXT

Animals anticipate. Did you know that? The happy hormones that are released when we are looking forward to something have also been found in beasties. In Dutch we call it “voorpret”, something along the lines of “forejoy” (not to be confused with “foreplay” which probably involves other types of hormones).

To aid my health and well being I intend to have lots of things to look forward to, to create an endless flow of happy hormones that boosts the immune system. I am keeping things very simple. It comes down to 2 priorities: myself and my writing. I will ease up on myself and my body, and push harder when it comes to my words.

Oh and one more thing. To end things on a high note let Iggy rock you into to New Year…