It's OK not to be OK and that's a wrap !!


 

I'm sure like me you have heard (more than read) that statement 'It's OK not to be OK'. 
For me this statement has been bouncing around in my head as of late. 
As my cousin Brian said in passing to me one day last year "Aidan, how well do you know your job"
I tell Brian, "Yep, pretty well, I'm good, I'm on top of it"
Then Brian asks me "How well do you know your own mind?"
I pull the brakes and I pull them hard. That was a very sobering question I was just asked and it touched on a nerve with me if you like. Dare I use the royal 'We' phrase. How well do we know our own mind ? 

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But lets just step aside and build a picture of where my thoughts and indeed mind were focussed over the past two weeks:


This last few weeks saw different things happening with my grey matter. 
There was a variance in the turning of the cogs and in a whole new direction for me. 
On Monday I was with the provincial radio station LMFM , doing a live one-to-one interview with Gerry Kelly during his lunchtime show. An absolute gentleman. I was made feel so relaxed and I got what I  don't notice very often when meeting people for the first time, I got looked straight in the eyes with a very friendly smile. 
From a brief chat before his radio show, Gerry did the extend the courtesy to me in asking was there any question off limits? That was an easy one for me to answer, No! In my own mind this would take away from the whole meaning of the interview and  my own mindset of what I wanted to share out there. I just followed that 'No' with the caveat to my interviewer by saying "Gerry, just be mindful of any question that you do ask, as you may receive an answer not appropriate to the time of day'". The house rules were set, I was now looking forward to an open and honest chat and to be fair to Gerry Kelly, I think he pushed the correct buttons with me in that regard. 

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The week before last, I sat down with the Meath Chronicle's editor Gavan Becton in the sitting room here in our house in Dunshaughlin. Gavan brought the criossants, I had the fire on, Alison provided the coffee, team effort. We started chatting and more chatting, the morning flew by. 

This piece is due to be published in the INSPIRE Magazine supplement of the Meath Chronicle this coming Wednesday 23rd November. 

We had met before, when I treated Gavan to a flight in my balloon over the summer season. At the time, Gavan had just settled into his new editors chair of our local provincial paper, so I figured what better to give this man an induction to his new role (Murf style) than to float him over the county he would now write for. What a beautiful flight we had and it complimented beautifully a previous interview that Gavan recently published in the Meath Chronicle and of course, as for his flight, he captured it poignantly on film. 
Click the link above to play Gavan's inflight movie.  (Duration: 2:04). 

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So over the past few weeks, there's been a lot of thinking and disseminating on my own behalf, not because I had to, I wanted too. The live one-on-one radio interview was important to me. Sitting down chatting to Gavan the week previous, just as equally so. 

Then the whole thing just caught up with me. We had just retired to bed the other night, I had just said my sleeply goodnights to Alison, zonked after my chemotherapy earlier in the week and then the band snapped, BANG !!
I just broke down in a flood of tears, sobbing my heart out into my pillow. "I'm just tired of being sick, I want to get better" I could hear myself cry, over and over again, "I just want to get better". It was like I wasn't forming these words, they were forming themselves. I was listening to them too for the first time in the third party, but they were my words. Alison cradled my head like a baby. What followed next was an immediate soothing affect coming over me like a warm shadow. I knew I was being transformed to a comfort place now. Alison's soft and caring head strokes, her calming words to me. I drifted off to sleep. 

This was all pent up inside me, posssibly over the past few weeks.

I could recall those words over and over in my mind. 
The words that I used earlier in this posting to introduce this blog:
"It's OK not to be OK". 

This is all part of the good days and the bad days on this journey.
The good are probably self explanatory, the bad can be physical, mental or of course both. 

It's important for me to realise my own way of addressing this. 
I call it the human, the medical and the gettting better side.
It's all joined up, albeit flipping from one dimension to another. 
These days are going to happen. 
The next day can only be better. 

As always, thanks for reading my blog. 

 



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