The history of the healing

Terrible six months

In October, my hair began to grow. My eyebrows and eyelashes seemed so bright black! Before chemotherapy, my hair had been straight, and the new one began to grow curly, confirming the well-known theory about it. I had been dreaming about curly hair all my life! Now I know that dreams come true, you just need to formulate them correctly.

I started to paint in a new style for me – abstraction. Sometimes I took part in exhibitions. I had one personal exhibition. But all this didn’t bring money. And in November, my husband was out of a job. I was sure he would find a new one soon. In the meantime, I went to clinics and various pension funds, confirming my disability status. Besides, in December it was time for another medical examination. Fortunately, by that time I went already not by taxi but by subway. And I also had a subscription to the fitness center paid until March. I went to do fitness as often as I could.

Relationships between my husband and me started to get worse. I don't want to describe the reason for the conflict because we lived together with him for 10 years, 9 of them happily. And it will be incorrect to put our dirty laundry on public display. My illness had exposed all those qualities that we had tried to ignore. I was hoping that everything would get better. It seemed to me that it would be enough for him to just find a job – and everything would be fine. Maybe it would have been so, but he would not find it.

Once I was very sad, and my psychologist friend advised me to write a fairy tale. I surprisingly answered that I was not a writer and couldn’t write fairy tales. She said: “Try. Just take a paper, a pen and start writing everything that comes cross your mind”. I tried. And I liked it so much! It was interesting for me to write it. It seemed like I was reading it. I was curious about what was next. Then I could reread it and analyze it. I sent the fairy tale to my friend, and she deciphered it. It is amazing what complex and multifaceted images the subconscious gives out. Since then, I have been writing fairy tales sometimes. Two of them turned out to be a continuation of the first one.

The next six months were just terrible. My husband started drinking. He went from daytime mode to nighttime mode. We almost stopped communicating. I used to get up in the morning and he go to bed. He spent the whole nights drinking alcohol and texting on the phone. We didn't have any leisure time together. He didn’t work. I had no money for anything, I was running out of savings, I had not yet been assigned a pension. I didn't know what to do. I could not find a common language with my husband in any way. I remember the words from one song: "It doesn't matter to us anymore which of us was more wrong. It's just that our fire has already gone out."

But then I still hoped that our relationship would work out. I couldn't believe that 10 years of living together would end like this. Such despair, such hopelessness, such a black abyss ahead, and I had absolutely no idea how to live on. I wanted to be back at the hospital. It was clear there what was happening to me and what to do, and some bright future was ahead. But then, when my drunk husband was sleeping, I didn’t have money and was not strong enough to work, I didn’t see any future. It turns out that the most difficult thing is not to survive the crisis, but to live on after it.

Several months passed as in a fog. I couldn't go for a walk because it was cold there. I was so tired of freezing! I couldn't sit in a cafe because I had no money. At home there was my husband who I had a conflict with. In February, I was finally assigned a pension, and we somehow began to make ends meet.

I started having nervous breakdowns. I brought myself to a state where every little thing upset me so much that I started crying hysterically and could not stop without a shock dose of sedatives. Fortunately, I have a friend who is a psychiatrist. She lives in another city, but we were chatting. She insisted on taking sedatives. I didn't mean to, but now I understand that she was right. If it wasn't for her, I would have completely lost my mind. She said which ones to take, so as not to harm my health.

By the way, as for my health. The tests showed "no negative dynamics". That is, the situation remained the same as when I was discharged from the hospital. And that pleased me. The doctors said that everything was fine.

In may my mother and I went to my brother to the other city. I used to live there before, and I have friends there. It was good to wind down and relax. By that time, I was so nervous that I can't tell you. It's strange how I didn't end up in a mental hospital. But that trip distracted me and calmed me down a little.

When I returned, my husband said that he wanted to divorce me. It was a relief. The relationship with him dragged on like rubber, I kept hoping that everything would get better, but I didn't understand what I had to do for this. And then this knot was cut at once, and I became free. I moved to our shared apartment in the Moscow region, which we had planned to use as a summer house. We agreed on that while it was being sold, I would live in it. I packed my things and took them away at different times.

I had the feeling that I was carrying not just a stone, but a whole mountain, and now I have got rid of it. And why did it seem to me that only I should work on keeping the relationships? Why did I suffer for so many months? The main thing is that everything is behind now. I am free. Now I need to rest and treat my poor frayed nerves.