Keeping Up

A suitable starting point to my story might lie in an explanation as to how 'keeping up the pace' and metaphorically running a race, took shape for me.

Nearly twenty years ago while in my twenties, I successfully kept ahead; I was fit (in all senses of the word), popular, reached degree status, claimed total financial independence and the world sat, as I'd wanted it to, invitingly at my feet. I was content with my place.

Although, after some years of grandeur, an irritating thought whizzed about in my mind, like a trapped fly: worrying that time would, one day, no longer be my friend - it would soon turn its back on me and behave as if it had never known me. It would accuse me of taking it too much for granted, not paying enough attention to its ticking hands.

By the dawn of my early thirties, everyone my age had hooked up. Married with a baby or at the very least married. They 'belonged' and more noticeable to me, they had children. Did this mean I had begun to slip back in my metaphorical running crowd ( which consisted of all those females in my age bracket)? In my own mind, if there existed a hint of self doubt to any question of mine, the answer always had to be yes. So, yes, I had inadvertently given in to a more complacent pace and was falling behind.

The consequence of this acknowledgement (I am certain) summoned Roman. He stood almost 6ft ( in shoes) which I'd decided I would overlook. Slightly thin on top too, for a twenty - eight year old, but for the sake of showing time courtesy, I chose to pretend it wouldn't matter. Unluckily, Roman had no house of his own, was renting a box -room and his car was so knackered that the shine had lifted from its paintwork. It reminded me of a pair of old, scuffed shoes I still kept from my childhood. Truthfully , I was quietly embarrassed to be seen in it. And, despite my friends' negative opinions about my new lover and his lack of suitable status, I carried on regardless.  So when he admitted his debt along with a side - serving of understandable explanations, I still decided to keep the news a secret, despite my personal forgiveness for his past mistakes . Please also consider that no matter what, this man had to be my solution as time was about to turn.

'You won't ever need to worry about being alone, Shannon,' Roman pledged, stroking my ponytail softly. 'I want you and we can have an amazing future.'

I took another sip from my glass of cheap, sour wine. I looked into his dark green eyes and enjoyed their glint.

' How do you know that? We've only had three dates.' 'Yeah and I want more. I always want more with you.'

'Promise it's not just sex. Promise me. Just don't make promises you won't keep,' I sighed heavily, aching for certainty. Roman leaned towards the low table we sat next to and set his almost empty beer glass close to my wine. Returning his convincing gaze, he gently moved my chin towards him and pressed his mouth earnestly against mine. A glorious electric sizzle whipped through my thighs.

' I promise. Look - I have an idea! Finish your wine... '

I'd never known a man who offered me so many guarantees so soon . It thrilled me, leaving me half - believing he was indeed, 'The One,' forgetting that I'd stopped striving for that idiotic ideal a long time ago.

His idea was for us to head immediately to the tattoo shop to have identical tattoos needled into our lower backs. After all, it was the most concrete assurance he could offer with immediate effect. Yet again, I kept this out of sight from all others, for fear of being ridiculed or accused of recklessness.

Within weeks, we were already engaged and Roman had moved in; I was basking in the warmth of his consistent presence.

I felt proud of my progress- I had begun to set a good, solid pace once again and the runners ahead of me didn't appear quite so far out of reach.

'It's too quick!' my grandmother ranted. 'Act in haste and repent at leisure,' she kept repeating. 'I know what I'm doing. I love him and I won't lose him!' I insisted, unhappy that she hated him with immediate effect. 'You've only met him twice. How can you know?'

She had but months left to live as she'd developed terminal lung cancer, which had recently spread to her poor brain. 'Well I don't bloody trust him. He 's after the money Shannon- why can't you see that? He knows what will happen once I die!' She continued with tears in her eyes.

'It's not like that. Anyway I need him now more than ever... I'm pregnant.'

The defeated , frail, little lady fell back into her sofa chair and sat, aghast, for what to me, felt like hours rather than minutes. She hardly ever cried, but this time as her tears fell, I had to tell myself it was the tumour invading her brain and her personality with it.

It was only weeks old. The foetus. I hadn't planned on telling her about the baby, as Roman and I had agreed to keep the news to ourselves until three months was up. But I wanted her to know; I wanted her to be happy for me. If only just a little happy.

It wasn't to be. She died too

soon- during an unusually warm September, clasping hold of her thorough disappointment in me and I am sure this went along with her tiny body into the earth - I had failed in my lifelong ambition to make her happy and proud.

Yet, I ignored the new ball of pain now setting hard in my heart, because I knew that with just a few more short sprints, I'd be level with the front - runners.

House prices began dropping after her burial though; as if I'd suddenly been cursed by her. Her home was my inheritance dwindling away; thousands gone in weeks. Eventually, we decided to take the plunge and buy Seven Oak Dene. A perfect solution it seemed. It also paved the way for me to pay off Roman's debt, which would in turn help us to pay the monthly mortgage.

His suggestion made absolute sense.

So by November that year, I had indeed miraculously boosted ahead to first place: doting fiancé, baby, house, career. I felt like the luckiest woman alive.

Roman and I were also fortunate to have had the most perfect time during my pregnancy: I even began enthusiastically transforming gran's old home into a new home for the three of us. To add to this, we couldn't wait for the arrival of our first bouncing baby.

But I ought to have known better than to have forced nature's hand...

Following thirty crushing hours of labour, Tristan was brought into our world eventually, through an emergency C - Section. At once, Roman seemed to fit the mould of responsible, proud dad. And at the start, I seemed to be perfect for the responsible role of dutiful, wholly fulfilled mother. When I say ‘the start’ I refer to the first few weeks..

Until the day I collapsed in our kitchen, holding a boiling kettle in one hand - of all things, and one of gran’s delicate China cups in the other.

Six months of sleepless torture for the both of us since the birth, might have taken its toll on me at last, but I knew it was more than simple exhaustion. Something wasn't right; it seemed as though nothing was completely real anymore since the labour: like looking at everything through frosted glass. All my senses had become muted and in truth, I felt very little. Except for one overriding emotion - fear.

The doctors predicted Multiple Sclerosis as lesions were found on the MRI of my brain. I had weakness in one side and suddenly, terrifyingly I couldn't sleep. Upon drifting off, an electrical current, a flash that I could actually see behind my eyelids, would spark like a lightning bolt, jolting me almost straight off the bed. To my private horror, after two gruelling weeks in hospital,it turned out not to be MS and my bloods revealed very little. I was a mystery and mysteries had to be dismissed - they would cost the health service way too much time and money. I was a problem they couldn't solve, taking up the space of a valuable hospital bed for someone who was fixable.

Back at home I could do very little; fatigue floored me like a train hurtling towards me at full speed. Family were hauled in by Roman and were provided a rota to help him care for woeful Tristan.

So I lay there in our bedroom, day after lonely day upstairs; my ears burning from the helpful relatives' naïve opinions floating up the staircase like phantoms coming to haunt and taunt me.

'She's just tired,' Amanda proposed. 'It's a difficult thing to adjust to after all.'

'Yeah but Roman's finding it bloody hard too and he's not got the luxury of lying up there in bed,' Roman's father would say.

'Well let's just see. Give it time,' his wife sang, laughing it all off, underscoring the whole situation as temporary .

The guilt I experienced sliced through me over and over, because I couldn't do what was needed for both Roman and Tristan. Humiliation also hung about my sick - room like a stench I couldn't rid. Panic threw my rational thoughts into a blender, as I often expected to die. My headaches and weakness worsened to a point where my body shook with any effort: even teetering to the toilet and back became hard.

My position in the run had been turned on its head by nature herself . Keeping up ( to be shoulder to shoulder with the fittest) would no more be the goal. That was going to be impossible, I conceded. Oh no. Instead, it had turned into a deadly, uphill run to keep pace with even the slowest runner of the group.

So, with this firmly in mind, I removed the covers from my heavy, unsteady body and pulled on my gown. I headed gingerly downstairs, holding on tightly to the banister as I descended to be with tearful Tristan who wailed ceaselessly, as if he were crying for me.

'

‘Oh my god, you're finally up!' Roman cried, with a look of uncensored scorn ruining his kind face, as he noticed me wander through the lounge doorway.

'Yes I am,' I smiled as I awkwardly knelt in front of him and howling Tristan and began tidying the sea of scattered toys.

'All better now then!' he remarked above the din, in a spiteful tone that squeezed my sad heart.

'Yes, all better now,' I affirmed, watching my hands shake as I placed the last of the toys in the box. In this desperate scenario, sensing Roman already resented me, I begrudgingly recalled my grandmother's warning, 'Act in haste and repent at leisure.'

Just a short while ago she had sat down in the vacant chair which now loomed in front of me, wagging her finger with those remonstrations that had seemed so very ridiculous.

And when Roman revealed a few months later that he was leaving me for someone else, her warnings resounded so loudly in my painful brain, and I did not know how I would continue this nauseating , nightmarish marathon with no one there to help me keep up. She would

have helped, yet she was gone. So would my mother, but she had gone too. Long ago.

But I knew if I stopped, I would be out of the race altogether and worse still, Tristan would too and his dear little life had hardly begun.

So I chose to look ahead, holding Tristan tightly despite his heaviness, and kept going. I just kept going.

Fourteen years later, I am still looking ahead. I still have Tristan to protect and guide and love; therefore I am still taking part , albeit lagging somewhere towards the middle or back of the crowd. The floor beneath me is still something cruel like sand. Or mud at times. My fear of dying has all but gone, but my heart stopping fear of failure and falling behind remains.

I continue to run from the ground that now collapses behind me as my disease devours me little by little; it remains a mystery.

Never mind: I just keep going. There is no choice. No option to stop. Or I will be swallowed whole.

Written by Eleanor Winstanley