Peru

I'm going to Peru!

It's mad!

I can't believe it!

It's not until *next* summer - but, I'm going to Peru!
For three weeks or so, not forever more.

Sarah, who I did Guides with in Westminster, is leading the Region trip and asked if I would go as one of the leaders. Which is great: we get on really well and have lots of laughs together as well as being pretty tolerant of each other! So, there's some formalities to sort out yet; it's not quite a 'done-deal'. But,

I'm going to Peru!

Of course, I'm scared stiff about it. But I feel that I have to do it. It's a new chapter, an opportunity handed to me on a plate. A chance to break out of this persona I've become over the last year and a half. No-more with the cancer, hello to someone who goes and does exciting things like going to Peru! I'm not sure I'm big enough and brave enough to be someone who does things like this but I've got a year to grow into it. Another year of healing, of starting to feel like myself again, of working out *who* I am again. And a chance not to be a scared person; not to be someone too frightened to ever do anything because the world might end if I fail or even if I'm just not completely perfect.

It's strange how last year, how cancer, how being treated for cancer has deconstructed me completely. It's like I was a very tenuous construction; held together so flimsily that I collapsed when the loose thread was pulled. And it's strange how you can be the same person but different simultaneously. My place in life was so precarious, like plate-spinning or juggling and cancer hasn't just been about cancer. Cancer has turned into a great navel-gazing-fest. But it needed, needs to be done.

I don't work properly, I broke; but I'm fixable.