Simpatico

Judy and I are always there for each other. This is so good I can't tell you.

In every way we fill each other's lives with fucking awesome.

This cancer business with Judy is hard sometimes. It's not like our relationship in itself is in any way hard; that's easy when you're with your soul mate. It's just that some days get me down, as sometimes they do Judy. Some days my head focuses on the hard stuff, and the ugly stuff, and life's crap that can do anyone's head in.

Sadly today I needed a big dose of fucking something, and Judy was there for me.

For me, some days it seems that I ache from care. Ache from love. Just ache like I can't keep on aching, but must keep going. Some days the glass is definitely half empty.

It's so easy sometimes to slip into seeing all that is dark. Seeing what will become. Seeing vibrant become tainted with premature and ugly blurred smears. Seeing cancer take its toll on both of our lives.

It's awful. But that's OK.

If life were even and uneventful and beige we'd never have cause for celebration, and never truly be delighted and elated and contented and satisfied and jubilant. So in a twist, life's shitty days make life brilliant.

So a dose of Pollyanna for me it was today. Glad games aplenty today. Fuck that ugly depressing shit royally today. Glance at things differently, be thankful for the good in every thing about this day, and leave the bad things where they are. See the bad, and challenging, and painful for what they truly are: enablers for good.

And now I feel so relieved after this attitude adjustment. And Judy feels so proud that I did it.

We are simpatico. Sympathetic to each other's needs and moods, and of similar temperament and of similar mind.

We're simpatico whatever we're doing, whatever is going on, wherever we are, and that helps both of us through thick and thin, and through fun and shit.

Our relationship is built on like-mindedness, respect, attention, support, and of course spark. And pulling each other out of the grumbles happens often just by being together.

Also a twist, cancer pulls us closer. Whether it's helping her to dress, trying to understand medically what is going on, being there when she's stabbed with cannulation needles, being a second pair of ears when Dr Rob explains so much, or helping get her safely to, and on and off the toilet.

Being so mutually supportive can give us things to chuckle over, too, like an event on a recent holiday.

Getting away from it all recently to Maldivian paradise in the middle of the Indian Ocean was right at the tail end of a course of dexamethasone steroids, which wasted away a lot of Judy's muscle strength. So wheelchair for this, lifting for that, and a lot of guided shuffling.

I have a twitch of something not quite right in my knee, and it was troubled up in the airport lounge on the way by an unthinking lady pushing past me, then certified as fairly fucked by helping Judy everywhere. The gammy knee hurts at times, but it's not bad enough to want fixing. One day on this holiday when I stumbled in pain with a twinge, Princess Wobbly Legs, who I was helping to walk, instinctively grabbed me to stop me falling. The moment should have ended in a sad mess of both of us crashing to the floor, but happily we recovered in each other's wobbly arms.

What a pair.

It could easily have ended the holiday, or ended up with both of us trundled around paradise in wheelchairs and riding the resort golf buggy.

We held each other tight, initially shocked, then grinned at each other in the moment, and descended into laughter together.

We couldn't do this without each other.