Not Dead….Yet !

So I’m still here but I have to say, it’s been a weird week !

Those enduring thoughts of imminent death stayed with me for a couple of days and in that time everything seemed extremely heightened. I suddenly seemed to notice everything.

Like:
- how captivating the flowers are in our garden, especially the roses on the pergola. This is the second bloom of the year and it is spectacular. The heads are enormous and the blood red petals are so soft and velvety. My favourite place to sit at the moment is on the swing underneath them in the morning and evening as they pump out their heady, divine fragrance
- the lavender at the back of the garden also looks stunning and smells heavenly
- lying in bed first thing in the morning whilst still dreamy and listening to the birds singing. I have never noticed before just what a rapturous sound it is
- looking up at the sky which has been particularly blue recently, while stretched out on the grass and imagining I’m floating up. It’s such a sublime feeling
- it seems that everything I eat, especially all this luscious, ripe fruit that is around at the moment, is just scrumptious. On Wednesday, my cherubic, angelic son made me a simple hot baked potato with lashings of butter and grated cheese and it tasted like food from the gods - blissful

I spoke to my therapist about the whole experience and he thinks it’s all rather strange. He said he would have been concerned if it was something I was longing for or seriously anxious about but as I’m not, he’s unsure what it could be. I asked him if he thought, as some readers have commented, that it might be death of the old self as I resolve various situations in my life and he conceded it could be. He said that he thought I had come a long way since we started, which I don’t think he’s said before.

We talked about my faith and beliefs and my attitude towards death (which has never been one of fear) and he also asked me if I had ever had any psychic experiences. When I started laughing, he wanted to know why I was so amused. I can never really make him out. Did he ask me that because it’s something he believes in or was he just checking if I really am in need of serious psychiatric help?

I asked him if he thought I was mad and he said it was a word he didn’t like and then a discussion followed on why what he thought of me should be so important and I got very confused in my answer. The only thing he gave away was that he did think after all this time that I was still trying to be very “alluring” in our sessions in order to make right the things that come out that I don’t like about myself. I told him I wasn’t trying and that I was naturally adorable and he rolled his eyes but I saw it – there was a hint of a smile !!!

I came away from him on Thursday evening feeling better. And I went to sleep without wondering if I would wake up. Friday morning felt more normal again and not so dreamlike and over the weekend, those feelings pretty much disappeared and all should have been well.

But then, late this morning, while I was at work, I got a call from my doctor.

He said that the long-overdue smear test that I finally went for last week had shown some serious abnormalities and that he had arranged for me to go into hospital for a colposcopy examination on Wednesday morning. I said I needed to check my diary in case I had any meetings and he just said very briskly that he strongly recommended I made the appointment a priority.

That sort of urgent language is worrying. So much for laughing at the idea of being psychic……

I put the phone down and cried.