During an unusual spot of Motherly baking today, I burn my arm.  While I’m calmly reaching up for the burn cream, fetching the first aid kit from the bathroom and applying the dressing with one hand, Roscoe enquires, while sitting on a chair,  if I’m okay.  “Well, I’ve just burned my arm on the oven door”.  His response?  “Again? That’s just careless”.    During my suppressed, and combined, snorts of hurt and irritation, it strikes me that once more I am faking it.  That what I’d really like to do is run, banshee-style, round the kitchen while waving my reddening arm and screaming rude words, at decibels so loud the neighbours can hear.

It makes me laugh to consider how I’ve used fakery in daily life.   Lots of us have Facebook lives, the ones where our personal brand takes on an idealised hue.  In my case I tend to post photographs of when we’re on holiday, when Roscoe is either acting goofy, looking handsome or lovingly at his adoring Mother.  Or the occasions where Craig is laughing so uninhibitedly free,  I can hear it through the image.  Sometimes I post photographs of friends and cocktails or shots, or friends with cocktails and shots.  The point is if you were trying to figure out who I am and what I’m like by looking at my Facebook posts,  you would think I was always travelling, exploring, having fun.  And yes, I do experience all of this but real life is not as colourful or varied or exciting as my Facebook posts would have you believe.

I have a girlfriend who occasionally sends photos of her intensely cute newborn son.  Her response to the comment of “he’s always such a smiley baby” is to remind us that she’s hardly likely to be posting photos of him screaming and looking like a demented demon child.  And boy is this the truth.  Although, I must confess to laughing inside when everybody would look at a newborn Roscoe and say “ooh, he’s so beautiful”   – particularly as both parties knew he was a shockingly ugly baby.  Fakery in these wacky hormonal situations, is probably the safest option.  Thankfully by 3 months, he was a stunning, if noisy, cherub, so much so that we were once tailed in New York by a bloke who believed that Roscoe was the real-life Gerber baby.

And then I think about my trips to the hairdresser.  Okay, so he displays all the physique, muscles and charm of his other job, as a professional ice hockey player, but why do I need to put on makeup before I go?  I don’t remotely harbour any nefarious thoughts about him but my vanity and ego will not let me turn up “Au natural”.  Especially as once he’s cut and fiddled with my hair and then dried it to perfection, it  doesn’t match the ageing face unless there is a previously applied smidge of lipstick and a wand waft of mascara.

Then there are the visits to the cancer consultant.  Where I’m so intent on being the best patient, the one he smiles benignly at because I’m making such good progress, that I forget to tell him about the jaw pain and the scar tissue battle and the fizzy tongue.

And when I’m in professional situations,  I sometimes pretend to be something I’m not feeling at the time.   When I’ve a head full of cotton wool and a mouth to match, I’m up extra early to carefully apply the face paint, to make last-minute changes to the outfit planned and  to work through the witty one liners to “gosh, you’re looking really good”  My favoured response is “thanks, its amazing what a spot of cancer can do to a person”.  I have sat in meetings feeling rising panic, when nothing said seems to make any sense.  I have belly breathed through prolonged senior level bullying with personal attacks on my core identity, not on the job I’m doing, and still managed to act with integrity and remain professional.  I’ve held it together when the task ahead seems impossible and my team need me to provide direction, when inwardly, in that moment, I have no clue but my unshakeable belief that together, we will make it work.   I have walked into meetings not knowing what I’m going to say but open my mouth to sound credible and articulate.  I’ve used face paint and office wear like a suit of armour and act it out.  And it works.  Because in truth,  very few take the time to look beyond the superficial.  We are all caught up in busy lives, 30 second snapshots, caught in our beliefs and unconscious bias’ which filter our thoughts and vision.    I know, if you can act confident, sound confident, look confident, you will end up being confident.  It’s afterwards you can be surprised and shocked at what you’ve achieved.

2016 is the year where I have honed my ability to pretend.  Outwardly all can be sorted, while inside I am ripped and dripping in angst and fear so rich I can taste it.  The consultant call to the beach, to tell me the biopsy was not good news, and after a 10 week wait, waking to the inevitability of my right thyroid gone, tested my resolve but loosened my vanity.  What’s another neck scar to add to the collection?!  It’s become farcical to worry about something so trivial.  And besides I now know how to fake looking well.  Nothing that a scarf , a spot of war paint and some flicky hair can’t sort.

The gift of my cancer is to have given me time to cast my eye inward. To explore who and what I am and what I stand for.  And it turns out that this is now where the real challenges lie.

Loving and believing and trusting in myself so I no longer need to pretend.