My stomach is churning. I feel sick. Tight. Full of terror. Body poised to fight or to flee far away from this situation. I want to cry. So what life-threatening emergency am I facing to provoke such bone-crushing panic? I need to make a phone call. Yep a simple phone call. To make an appointment. […]

We mark the years that pass. We celebrate the birthdays, the anniversaries, the good times. Mourn the deaths. We mark the passage of time. I have been flying solo for a year now. A whole whopping great big year. Gone in the blink of an eye. Stuffed so full of shifts, challenges and adventures I […]

Turns out I was just a teeny tiny bit ahead of myself when I wrote the post back last September boldly titled ‘and I am back‘. I was wrong. And very far from being back here. Last summer I went from being one of two for 23 years to just one. Simply me. On my […]

Another day, another mental health awareness day. That’s how it feels sometimes. Another day where my social media feeds fill up with words and images. Of support, encouragement, reassurance. Calls to reach out to those with mental health issues and for them to reach out in turn. Tales of sorrow, heartbreak and sheer bloody mindedness […]

I didn’t mean to stay away. I simply stopped. Stopped writing. Stopped reading. Stopped being. Life was complicated. Life is still complicated. I needed to step back. Had to step back. I needed to write yet felt unable to sit down and start. Like there was too much in my head, like I didn’t know […]

Sometimes. Too often. I feel I am drowning. Like I can barely keep myself above the water. Even on good days it still feels like treading water, as if I am merely biding time till my energy runs out. Waiting for it to become too much, for it to overwhelm. I forget I have not […]

Do you know me? Because I certainly don’t. I don’t know who I am anymore. The idea for this post has been eating away at me for months now. For almost a year. But I kept on pushing it away. Too scared to write it. Worried what I might uncover, that I might not do […]

Usually I plug myself in when out in public on my own. Protect myself from how the noises and movements overwhelm. Hide so there is no risk of engagement. Distract from the worries and anxiety flowing from me being out here. Where people can see me. Lose myself in the music entering my ears. Today […]

We are almost at the end of Mental Health Awareness Week 2018 and as is always the case with any of the days or weeks trying to draw attention to mental health, I am conflicted. Part of me is all ‘yeah we need more things like this’ and burns with the opportunities they tease me […]

I consciously try not to use the word ‘battle’ when talking about my mental health. Not because I think people who use that word are wrong. I think it is important that people talk with the words that are right for them. And ‘battle’ doesn’t feel right for me, doesn’t work. I don’t want to […]

Music is threaded within and amongst the strands of my life. It is the memories, it is the now. It is the smiles, the movement, the sorrow. The discovery of the new, the comfort of the familiar. It has always mattered, always been something I have sought out. Yet this last year music has been […]

Somehow I have turned into someone who goes to the gym. Regularly. I’m not quite sure how it happened. One minute I was minding my own business enjoying my walks and mulling over the somewhat distinct possibility of doing some other physical activity. In the next, I find myself with a gym membership, a personal […]