I'm feeling sad writing this as it's my last blog. As trishcookingcurrie anyway. It's time to stop after nearly ten years.
Not just take a break as I have done many times and returned.
But I have a reason. Instead of going on with it I'm going back inside it.
Up to now I haven't been able to re-read it - re-visit what I wrote and felt.. ...before Robin's diagnosis ...then living with him and his illness and the impact on us... and then afterwards ...living without him. Of course I remember it all - and have added guilt and regret - but I haven't really let myself know what happened...and I've kept blogging to try and make sense of my life now.
But now I feel that until I really know what happened - and it's all there in my blog in black and white and colour - and let it enter me - the truth and reality of it - I can't move on with my life. I keep trying to ...changing my house, my home...searching for a place to rest, a person to become, but I'm still stalked by loss and trauma.
Several people, including my father, over the years have suggested that I turn the blog into a book. One which might help other people who have been or are still going through something similar to what I did - caring for Robin through the years of a terminal illness.
I have always rejected the idea. There is just too much of it.Thousands of words to edit. And a book? Me? I'm just not good enough.
But recently, and thanks to kind and supportive encouragement, I'm beginning to entertain the idea as a possibility. And without any idea about how.
Even if it doesn't get as far as that - as publishing - I want to do it not only if it could help someone else but because it could help me. To go back deep into that time...to mourn ....to heal ...through the process of reading and editing and re-writing ... and to create a goodness out of The Robin Years.
And then let it be.
So I have booked flights to Portugal in March. To my timeshare apartment in the Algarve where I can retreat and immerse myself in this blog ...go back to the beginning ....
and just let myself unravel into whatever arises.
And trust in the goodness.