I went to church last night for a reconciliation service. I was led to believe that this service was for those of us who are just far to shy (not naughty of course) to go to confession on a regular basis in order to be absolved of all of our sins.

As I have mentioned before I am a Catholic but it took some time to get confirmed and mainly because of the confession part of this particular faith.

I have my personal faith and with that is a journey that probably has no bearing on which particular church I go to but I eventually realised that being Catholic was part of who I am. It is part of my culture, part of my families culture and basically what I knew about and felt comfortable with the most.

When you have been very ill, well at least in my case being the mom with 9 lives, you do a lot of praying and when you pull through time and time again it has led me to think about faith in a slightly more gentle way.

As my mother had convinced me that this was a service that I could go to and without having to list ALL of my sins just be absolved I was eager to attend. You see at the beginning of every confession you start with ‘Forgive me Father for I have sinned, it has been ….. years since my last confession.’

Well seeing as I had my last confession when I was confirmed it was 4 years ago and that would take my tally down quite substantially and so I marched off in good faith (excuse please!).

As soon as we got settled and had the Hymn sheets in our hand I realised that anonymous absolution was not going to happen. There 2 hymns down were the words ‘ to be sung during individual reconciliation’. My stomach lurched as I pointed this out to my mother who was also more than happy to have all of her sins systemically removed during a Mass exodus. She had a look of horror about her that immediately dispelled any thoughts that she had pulled me into this under false pretenses and so we sat unnervingly waiting as, one by one, those braver and bolder than us dissipated to the 4 priests scattered around the church. You see there is a confessional but to keep up with the times and to move forward with the open faith policy that is so en vogue you just go and sit next to the priest and hope that the choiristers and pianist keep playing as you mull over your discressions of note.

Neither of us wanted to get the deaf priest for fear of shouting out our woes to the congregation and so we just sat, and sat, and my tummy starting singing along just to make me that little bit more unconfortable than I was before. But eventually my mother obviously had to show her (39 year old) daughter that this was easy and she popped of to share her deepest, darkest truths with the hearing aid cladded parish priest and what could I do but to follow suit and plod along to the back of the chapel to confess my unabashed anger with the world (whilst smiling my nervous twitch Chesire cat grin) to the Spainish priest who I thought would be easier on me.

It is all over now.

We can go back and take those years off of our absolution table and breath in complete piety until the next time.

I must say that it does have such a strong hold on you and priests can give you so much – the way I see it is that if you have a nice, kind absolving priest you can be happy for the time to come until you next get the courage but if you are unfortunate enough to get a hard-lined, rigid man of the cloth it is a bit like smashing a mirror only the years of bad luck go on until you next get the courage to be absolutely absoluted!

So I went to see my ENT surgeon on Friday.

I have been off the antibiotics for nearly 3 weeks and so on that note everything is looking good.

There is a problem though. The bone graft under the titanium plate which is almost the size of my forehead is rubbish. It doesn’t have a good blood suppl and has therefore not taken very well and, in turn, it is causing the hole in the skin to get larger.

And so he spoke rapidly about me going to be centre of discussion at their multidisciplinary meetings so that they can all discuss what they are going to do with me.

Frontal bone flap, skin grafts blah, blah, blah!

I just get more complicated as this story unfolds.

My ENT surgeon told me that he often speaks to my plastics consultant and whilst they have conversations regarding world politics, the state of finance, they inevitably turn the conversation around to me!

Needless to say I am going to have to go through another almighty operation but at least I am alive to do it after seemingly beating MSSA, pseudomonas and strep infections to this point.

I spent yesterday and the rest of Friday dealing with my PTSD in its angry phase. Hating the world and feeling as though I had consumed a bottle of wine whilst watching people brush past me all being normal.

l even tried to do ‘normal’ myself and sit and have coffee and a cake without hatred wanting to punch every living soul (including dive bombing pigeons).

Needless to say – PTSD and the pigeons won!

As I sit here with my son by side I realise that I am indeed a very blessed lady. I will not be swayed into anger and negativity, I shall ensure that I am true to myself by being loving and giving with sincerity and kindness.

It is so easy to be swayed by others animosity. Just this morning I was trying to cross a pedestrian crossing and I realised that about 70 % of drivers look away from you whilst braking! Do you realise that we put our trust in their ability to come to a complete stop without even looking at where they are going in order to avoid eye contact and perhaps some basic form of communication and acknoledgement of another human being.

I know I live in London and Londoners, either born or bred or capitalized, all have an understanding that acknowledgement of fellow man is almost confirmation of complete madness but I was very sad indeed.

I went out for this said walk in retaliation to slight animosity from my step-children’s family in the form of list of clothing that should be returned as they ‘always leave something behind’. I am sorry, but I found this rather offensive. So I refuted this offensiveness and went out to buy a peace offering only to be confronted by a maniac looking away from me hoping that I would be stupid enough to start crossing the road before he had come to a complete standstill.

I know that we often find a stray T-shirt or sock amongst the washing piles after a visit but is this not normal? I will not get het up – I will return all stray and random articles of clothing when found and I shall endeavour to be what I want to be – Happy and alive.

As we start our journey to return the children to their mother’s home, I pledge not to engage in any road rage, to enjoy the stark flatness that is Lincolnshire and rejoice in the fact that we have had a wonderful beginning to the New Year. All together. Stray socks and all xxx