It's time to press reset

What if I don’t want to ‘get back to normal’?

An audio version of this article (narrated by me) is available here:

Sometimes it’s a choice to parachute out of your own life and land somewhere totally different. You weigh up the pros and cons, assess the possible repercussions and take the chance. Or you simply think, “To hell with the consequences,” and smack the ejector-seat button, come what may. I’ve set fire to my life more than a few times and the fallouts have been, unsurprisingly enough, pretty dramatic. And yet, they were my fallouts. I made the decisions that led to the chaos and so I embraced it. 

Now though, I find myself in a strange position: I am having to start my life all over again, pretty much from scratch, and none of it was my decision. Having been sick for 20 months with cancer, pregnant for nine of them, and now having been given the all-clear, I’m left looking around at what’s left of ‘before’ wondering how on earth to piece it all back together. 

But maybe I don’t have to?

A new normal

There’s a lot that can be said for ‘getting back to normal’. Normal is safe. There is a security there that someone in my position very much craves. But I’m coming to realise that I can choose which parts of ‘normal’ I try to recreate and which bits I ditch in favour of new routines and new attitudes. 

Much of what I thought made me me was stripped away during my illness – my family life, social life, work life, online life, writing, fitness, health, travel, and so on. I don’t even look the same as I used to, my body swollen and scarred, my hair thin, grey and cut short. It’s made me reassess how I identify with myself and how others do too. Am I still ostensibly me even with all of those things altered beyond recognition? Yes, because the important bits changed with me. My family and friends worked around the obstacles, and my body produced my baby, Billy, and healed itself from the bastard tumour, Dennis. I am still here, still the same person at my core even if my circumstances and appearance have changed… so why not keep changing things?

I was forced into a compulsory hibernation and am now emerging into the light like a blinking mole rat. A mole rat with a clean slate. I can choose to build a new normal, deciding what to keep, what to change and what totally new things to try. This is both frightening and exciting – and it’s also ridiculous that it took getting cancer for me to realise I was in dire need of a reset. 

Making everyday choices 

When you’re faced with the fact that time is finite and you’re not invincible, how you spend that time and who you spend it with suddenly becomes very important. While I’m not intending to sell all of my material possessions (I love stuff) and set up an ashram, I do plan to reassess my priorities, take some creative risks and stop worrying about meaningless or hurtful bollocks. For too long I’ve thought, “I’m not the kind of person who does X, Y or Z”. Well, I’m also not the kind of person who gets cancer, but whaddya know?

I want to make conscious decisions about the kind of work I do, the people I spend time with, the books I read, the podcasts I listen to, the shows I watch, the food I eat, how I exercise, and even what clothes I wear. I want to question things I used to do on autopilot, noticing where I find pleasure and where I decidedly don’t and structuring things so I have more of the former and less of the latter. I want to be a good mum, partner, sister, auntie, niece, friend, colleague. I want to put in the work that makes those relationships solid. I want to accept that some relationships are over or are not worth pursuing and that that’s okay – I don’t have to be liked by everyone. I also want to stop worrying about looking foolish, comparing myself and finding myself lacking. Life is too short for that absolute nonsense.  

That novel that’s been on the backburner for 20 years, why aren’t I writing it? Those clothes that I save for best, why aren’t I wearing them? (Doesn’t every day that I get to live now qualify as ‘best’?) And my friends who I don’t see enough, why aren’t I seeing them? There are big resets and small ones and I intend to make both. It is less risky for me to make these changes than to believe I can seamlessly return to the way things were. I can’t and, more importantly, I don’t want to.

So much of life is lived because that’s the way we’ve always lived it. 

Well, fuck that. 

Just One More Thing 

Yes, I’m essentially starting fresh, but with 40 years of experience behind me and all of the “fuck it” attitude that comes from cheating death. So what if a new idea fails – am I dead? No! Brilliant. #Winninghere. And, if you’re reading or listening to this then you’re not dead either (if you are, that’s awesome and I’d love to write a feature on you), so this should hopefully strike a chord. It was a very good friend who flagged up to me that I am not the same person I was 20 months ago and so questioned why I’d automatically go back to doing the exact same things. I’d never challenged my own assumption that slotting back into ‘normal life’ was the obvious next step when actually it made little sense. How exciting to realise that you are in control and that you do have choices – and what a privilege to be able to make them.  

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*Exceedingly modest reminder that I have written eight bestselling mental-health books which have been translated into at least 10 languages. I’ve also written a book about the TV show Friends which would make a delightful gift for any Friends obsessives. All are available to buy online or at your local bookshop.