This week I’m feeling a little bit lost. I’ve been good and bad and ok again. I’ve been looking at some of the things I have been doing in the last little while and I don’t really recognise myself a lot of the time. There are some things that I don’t feel great about, but at the same time I don’t have any kind of regret for the experiences that I have had up until now. I do also know that I probably don’t want to keep going like I have been, it all feels a little bit out of control… so maybe it’s time to just hit pause for a minute and breathe a little bit!?

I’m tired and I’m missing Claytie… that’s absolutely a daily thing, but some days are just more! This whole week feels like more. I miss knowing who I am and where and how I fit… I don’t feel like I have that anymore, and while people in my world try to understand, most of them don’t really and they can’t. I hope that it stays that way for them too, because the reality of this is horrendous! I think there is a kind of belief in a lot of people that at two years in I should be not necessarily over my grief, but a bit more steady in my life… if only it worked like that!!

My entire world got turned on it’s head when Claytie died. It’s a pile of broken and tangled, twisted rubble. I’m trying to find pieces that I recognise and hold onto them. It’s really hard putting them back together in any kind of way that looks like me because I’m never going to be the same person that I was. I can’t be – and I absolutely feel like the new me is very different. I’m trying to get to know her, and that’s been a hard thing to wrap my head around, I feel like I should still be me!? There are parts of the new me that I am getting to like and others that will always feel strange and wrong. I feel like I’m constantly contradicting myself in so many ways. Old and new feelings and opinions clashing making my foundations incredibly rocky.

I absolutely second guess pretty much every single thing in my world, and often I seek out people that I trust to get their take on things – we don’t always agree, and that’s ok! I go round and round in circles weighing up pros and cons, often with no clear outcome! Mostly I settle into the thing that makes me feel happiest, because life is too bloody short! … And while from the outside it maybe looks like I’m doing ok, it’s all just pretending! It’s like that meme about the sock sliding off inside the shoe… untie the laces and you’ll see the chaos!

Every so often inside this mess tho, there’s been a glimmer of something that feels good and real. Those things aren’t always neat and tidy either, and they don’t always line up with the things I thought I knew about myself – more second guessing and contradicting myself right there! I do know that sometimes things aren’t going to work out the way I’d like them to… fairy tales are impossibly hard to recreate, and I have had the most amazing fairy tale! There’s a whole lot of risk taking with your heart in all of this that seems obvious, but is a surprise at the same time. I’m trying to find a new happy and it’s hard not to grab onto those glimpses of lovely things when they are there, even with all of the mess around them. Maybe the messes cancel each other out?!