A splatter of small screens filled with human faces dance on the screen in front of me. There are 18 screens/faces, including mine. My Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Skills course is back. I catch a glimpse of my familiar features on one of these small screens, in our virtual classroom. Except, this year, the fifth year I have taken this course, those features are no longer my familiar features are they? They don’t belong to me anymore, they belong to 4 months of chemotherapy.
I’m immediately transported back 12 months previous, to my first day with my last level 3 cohort, (many of which are now on our Diploma course). I am in an actual classroom – with people – close to people – and there are no signs of face masks or hand sanitizers! I am stood in front of the horseshoe shaped seating arrangements, with hungry eyes looking at me, as I introduce myself, the course and the expectations of what the next 30 weeks will be like. The excitement, enthusiasm and passion sizzles in the air and infects me. This is why Iove teaching. I love being with people and sharing in the common sense of what becoming a counsellor feels like. The motivations to do such a role stretch wide, but usually come down to a real desire to help and support others with their distress and difficulties.
Twenty years ago I was the student, sat looking wistfully at my tutors, wanting so much to be as skillful and as experienced as they were. I wanted to do their job – to share, to reflect and explore the innate potential of others. To develop other people to become the best counsellor’s they can be and go out and make a small positive difference in a very big negative world.
And now, here I am, that tutor, that person with the skill and experience, ready to share, ready to learn and ready to facilitate this large group through their journey, to their destination. I take a moment and just allow myself to ‘be’ with where I have found myself and where my hard work has brought me. A satisfying career teaching and counselling other people who want to invest in their personal development as human beings. What an absolute honour.
But now, 12 months on, everything in my world, and your world has changed. COVID has arrived for us all. It is still here and it is still changing how we work and teach and counsel. Then, of course, the cancer came in May. What existed 12 months ago is a life I can only reminisce on.
I had a moment today when I was pegging out the washing, thinking having chemo is not the end of this for me. I may well end treatment and be able to stand up again, grow hair, get energy back, and get going again. But I’ll never ever rid myself of the fear and uncertainty that the cancer may return again. Take those familiar features and twist them into something for itself again.
I am scared to death of this chapter as it starts to feel it draws close. September means Autumn for me, new term, new students, new academic year. It now also means I am seven weeks away from my last chemo treatment. I am seeing this as a date of getting my life back, but who the hell am I kidding? I will never ever get my life back. It will always exists under a cancer cloak. And that my dear friends is what angers me and makes me want to rip my own skin off and scream so loudly and so violently my skull breaks.
Despite having oral thrush and feeling 30% nausea, I fill the 3 hour teaching window as effectively as I can. We are online and it is not easy. I search and promote the positives to this remote delivery and sprinkle them into my teaching – looking for the welcoming eyes of the students. I look for approval, disapproval and connection. Not easy when we are not actually in each others presence.
I raise my game, allowing the energy and enthusiasm through – getting them involved, using humour and smiles. My damn broken, I reach for every technique I have to keep 17 people engaged and enthralled!
You’d have to ask them if I was successful. But as the teach comes to ahead, and we say our goodbyes, I drop heavily into the chair as I watch the array of faces pop off back to their lives. The night is crawling in, and the dusk hangs in the air in the lodge. My hands find their place behind my hand and I sit there – eyes closed softly, allowing the electric charge of the last 3 hours to dissolve. I breathe the last few bits out and silently talk to myself – well my chemo side effects actually.
‘Would you be as kind as to not make your presence felt too much over the next 7 weeks so I can keep this high level of mental activity up’.
As usual – the response is silence. No two-way conversation with this chemotherapy. Only empty spaces, filled with the ‘What if’s’ and over analyzing.
Like wind. It blows and teases you and catches you up in it’s invisible current, immersing you in its movement. Its strength and direction dictate are invisible. You have no idea how gentle or violent it will become.