The new year is a complicated time for many. Pressure to change lives and bad habits; the insistent urge towards temperance, new hobbies, exercise (yes I’m doing this to appease my complicated back). January can be a forest-clearing of things that no longer serve us. There’s comfort in balancing the scales at a Janus time of looking backwards and forwards. If there’s a month to go easy on yourself, this is definitely it. January 5th is always a red letter calendar day for me, but particularly this year. 20 years ago today, I was diagnosed with a rare type of leukemia and my husband – who only revealed to me as I wrote Constellations - was warned to “prepare himself for the worst”. On this date, I often think about the clock of that day. The 4am chest pain, which turned out to be a massive pulmonary embolism; the ambulance arriving and the paramedic strapping me – and him – upright to a pole because I couldn’t breathe when I lay down; the cold slipstream of oxygen sliding into my lungs…
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