Why I Write

“Why do you write?” A simple question, with a thousand answers.

I write because I want to escape. I think too much. I get lonely. The ideas pop into my head and they’ll bother me until I write them down. It’s the easiest way for me to communicate. It’s fun. It’s easy. I’m good at it, and probably many more reasons I can’t think of right now.

I guess the main reason is to escape… and maybe because I think too much.

Writing is like breathing for me, it’s just there, and it’s just something I’ve always done without thinking. When I was young, I would write stories about two sisters called Swim and Sam who were based on me and my childhood best friend.  In my teen years I wrote a story about a girl who was rescued from her horrible family by her best friend Charlie. I also began a very long-winded story, that I’m still yet to finish around fifteen years later, about a young girl who lives in a cemetery and can talk to ghost.

My brain just gets lost in thoughts and I can’t help but go with it.

I always longed to be someone who was always lost in a book, but I would struggle to read a full book and I’m still the same now; it takes a special book for me to be able to finish it. I don’t like knowing it’s coming to an end, which says a lot about me, but the books that never had to end lived in my mind. Even if I put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboards) and wrote it, it never actually had to end because it could live on in my mind.

I do worry about how I’m going to let go of characters I’ve created when their stories are actually done. I’ll miss them like old friends, which I image other writers feel too, but I guess that brings me to another reason why I write; I’m often quite lonely.

I’ve always been lonely, which is sad to admit. Growing up I always had friends, but they always stayed somewhere else; school, the next town over, or only visited on a weekend. When I was on my own I longed to be with someone, a friend who didn’t have to leave, and so that’s why I went on adventures as Swim and Sam. That’s why Charlie was such a good friend to the character I can’t even remember the name of, and why even now in my writing, everyone has such close-nit friendships, and ride-or-die best friends; it’s all I ever wanted, and in a story was the only way I could have that.

Bit sad right?

I’ve always kept the worlds I escape into myself, but I’m learning to enjoy sharing them worlds, whether they be a part of my real world or my fictional worlds. I’ve come to realise they help others feel less lonely too and that’s a sentiment that makes me feel warm and fussy. I can write you a friend in a world where you’re a different person, or I can write an experience I’ve had that makes your shoulders relax and think ‘I wasn’t alone after all.’

Most of my family are artistic folk. My brother and cousins are all artists, and although they write too, it’s the artistic side I’ve always envied. The ability to sit and draw something without any thought is magic to me, and something I can only do with words; I can’t paint a picture on a canvas, but I can paint a picture in your mind, and I’m starting to realise, that’s pretty cool too.

So, why do I write? Because I’m an artist that can’t draw and I hate being on my own. It’s how I cope with the world and help make it more colourful.

Why do you write?

My backpack.

Therapy is fantastic. It can help you see your world from another angle, it can take that weight off your shoulders that’s been weighing you down for years, it can assist in finding your self-esteem. But you know what, sometimes, it just feels really shit.

The thing is, it’s meant to be shit sometimes! It’s not meant to be easy talking to a stranger about your life, letting them in through the door and not knowing whether they’re going to take their shoes off and tread lightly, or come in and stomp around with big heavy boots.

I’ve seen many counsellors in my life, I’ve studied counselling, wrote assignments on it, and I’ve counselled my own clients, but none of that makes any difference to how hard it can feel sometimes.

I recently went back into therapy and after my last two counsellors both had to temporarily stop working due to ill health. I was very reluctant to make a connection with another counsellor – but needs must, so I did and it’s working well. Or at least until today anyway.

See, I’ve been working with my current counsellor on emptying my metaphorical backpack. In it is everything in my life that I’m holding on to; things that make me angry, thing that I regret happening and things I’ve felt wronged by. I’m not sure why I kept a hold of them for so long, but I have, and it feels good to have a sort out and get rid of the things I no longer need.

Of course, it’s a lot easier said than done.

I imagine everything in my backpack is in another bag or a box, and each is a different colour. Some of the bags or boxes are squashed from being in there for so long, and others are new. But others are more like tumours that have grown into the fabric of the bag. They’re black and weigh a tonne. They’re holding me down, and my shoulders hurt from dragging them around, and because they’ve grown into the backpack itself, they feel impossible to get rid of.

The tumour in the backpack is made up of shame, sadness, depression, blame, worthlessness, and isolation; all things I felt when in an abusive relationship.

…seeing the word ‘abusive’ on the screen before me makes me feel uncomfortable, but I’m leaving it there, because that’s what it was. He may not have laid a finger on me physically, but emotionally and mentally I was tortured.

“Well, I think it needs to be dealt with.” My counsellor told me, and I couldn’t agree with her more, but I’m not sure if I’m ready yet? On the other hand, are we ever ready for anything in life?

When looking in the backpack, I know the black, oozing, horribleness is festering at the bottom, so in the past I just wrapped fabric around it, and wrapped it so hard I couldn’t see it. Then I added another layer, and another, and another until it was unrecognisable. I then sealed it with layer of tape until it looked like a football wrapped in Sellotape. Then I left it at the bottom of the bag and threw things in over it, to help me forget it was even there.

Which was all well and good until I’ve began emptying the backpack.

Now the bag has less contents, the black mass looks bigger, and it’s too much. My counsellor suggested imagining setting fire to it, but I think instead I’m going to slip the backpack off my shoulders and let it fall to the ground. I’m going to salvage the small things I threw in and put them in a new, smaller backpack and sling that on my shoulders instead. Things that are in yellow, green and pink boxes – things I can look at right now. I’ll leave the tumour in the other bag and I’ll leave it outside.

Carrying the heavy backpack that contained one of the worst times of my life was exhausting and looking at it today made me shut down. I could only muster one word answers and move to wipe tears from my cheeks; I’m not ready to look at it again for a while, but that doesn’t mean I have to keep carrying it around all the time, right?

I’ll leave the manky, old, battered backpack outside, and come back to it when I’m ready. When ever that may be. And even though therapy sometimes feels like I’m paying someone to beat me up, I know one day it will be worth it.

Maybe I won’t need a backpack for my past one day, maybe more of a pencil case or purse instead. Or at least I can hope!

The anger that comes with grief.

Grief. It’s a horrible thing. It’s lonely, it’s sad, and nothing can prepare you for how it will feel, because everyone experiences something different and for different lengths of time. I’ve experienced grief before, I’ve lost Grandparents, my Aunty and Uncle and many pets, but no loss has ever hit me quite like losing my daughter.

Most of it feels as I would have expected; the sadness, the hollow feeling in my chest and the loneliness, but what’s surprised me the most is the anger I feel.

When studying counselling I learnt a little bit about bereavement and I remember Kubler Ross’s stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance. Although I knew anger was a part of it, I assumed it would be anger at myself (Which of course, it is) but what I didn’t consider would be the anger I would feel to those around me.

I think if I could be scanned into a computer and had a pie chart made of me I’m certain a solid 65% would be pure anger; I just manage to hide it very well. I’m not a person that deals with anger very well at the best of times, so feeling as if I am currently over half made up of pure anger is a tad unsettling.

To me, anger is a bad thing that I’m wrong for feeling (But that’s a problem for another day) and so being angry that my little girl was snatched away from me feels like something I shouldn’t be feeling… despite that sounding like a very regular thing to feel as I look at it written down. But the thing is, it’s not just that that I’m angry about.

One place I cannot escape the feeling of anger is at work. For example, recently someone asked me where the nappies were, and so I took her. Only she stopped halfway and declared “Oh, hang on. I’ve forgot the baby.” and proceeded to walk back two aisles to collect her little boy, who was stood clutching the trolley. Let me tell you, it’s a really good job it’s still compulsory to wear a face mask, because the words I whispered to myself about her, and the names I called her would have got me into some big trouble.

“How come she gets a baby, and I didn’t? I would never forget my baby in a supermarket.”

I was so angry I had to take myself off the shop floor for a moment because it only would have taken one person to utter “Where’s the pregnancy tests?”  for me to want to punch someone.

The most worrying part is, I’m not sure if my anger is getting better, staying the same, or getting worse over time. But I guess it’s still early days, it has been ten months, which is no time at all I know, but I just want to feel normal again.

I don’t even remember what normal that feels like.

Last week, I had a lovely day with my Mam, I spent the day at her house with her and the cat. It was a gorgeous warm day and I’d driven to her house with my car windows down, listening to Paramore’s After Laughter album; it felt like a small injection of happiness. I did the same on the way home from her house too, it was beautiful.

Well, it was beautiful until I pulled up outside my own house and I looked up to notice a banner in my neighbour’s window that read “IT’S A BOY!”

My happiness instantly flew away. Neither the sunshine, nor Paramore could help now. The anger filled my body and poured out my eyes. I burst into my house, threw my shopping on the floor (The welfare of the bread was the least of my worries right now) and I went upstairs to tell my boyfriend.

“It’s not fair. Why does she get to bring her baby back home and we didn’t!”

I feel like a broken record.

Or maybe just a broken person.

It’s not that I’m not happy for someone having a healthy baby and bringing them home, that’s all I wish on people! It’s just the immense jealousy I feel that we didn’t get that too.

But that’s the thing, nothing can prepare you for what you may, or may not feel when losing a loved one. Whether it’s your Grandad, your baby, or your dog; it’s grief that surprises you and manifests in its own peculiar ways, bringing with it intense emotions that hit you like a train.

It feels odd to say “Hello, I’m a very angry person right now.” but that is the reality of my grief, and I guess I just wanted to say that apparently (According to my counsellor anyway), it’s very normal.

I know deep down it doesn’t make me a horrible person, and it’s actually not a reflection on me as a person; it’s a reflection of the pain and grief I’m feeling. I’m not angry that someone had a baby, or that they had a healthy baby, (However, I am angry about the woman forgetting her baby in the shop) I’m just angry that I never got that.

It’s going to hurt for a long time, and it’s probably not going to feel any better for an even longer time either. But in talking to my counsellor about it, she’s told me time and time again that feeling this way is normal, which is nice to know in a way. I felt like I should write this post in case someone reading it feels a similar way, someone who doesn’t pay a counsellor to tell them their feelings are okay and normal.  

We’re not alone in our anger and we’re doing the best we can, even if we’re doing it through gritted teeth.

My wings.

‘Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness yet still become something beautiful.’ – Beau Taplin

After all the loss and grief I’ve experienced over the last year, my life feels as if it’s filled with gaping holes from what was, or was meant to be. I’m sat in this life that’s filled with holes, thinking “What next?”. I described myself as a pair of fishnet tights; filled with holes, but some how still managing to keep it together. However, I don’t think I’m doing it quite as stylishly as a pair of tights!

While talking to my therapist I discovered that each loss has taken a part of myself with it, and I’ve ended up building a giant wall all around myself to protect myself from anymore pain. I’m just sat within this sparse looking castle on my own. I’m wanting to get out, but it’s safe in here and I’m too scared to even climb up and peek over the wall to see what is on the other side.

For a while now I’ve been okay sat on the floor, just wondering, but now I’m getting to the point where I kind of want to know what’s waiting for me.

My therapist challenged me to think about what might be on the other side, or what I want to be on the other side and as usual, I’m stuck feeling as I’m in being torn in two different directions: whatever is waiting for me could be great! OR of course, it could be horrible.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to find out, but it’s interesting to think about.

My career as a counsellor is over. What career do I want next?
My friendship with my best friend is over. So are there other friends waiting for me?
I lost my baby girl. Is there another baby waiting to arrive over there?

It feels kind of suffocating to think about. But it feels equally suffocating sat within these walls.

My life has felt so predictable for so long. I decided I wanted to be a counsellor when I was around fifteen, I’ve wanted to be a mother since I used to play with my baby dolls and a small child, and I’ve been best friends with the same girl since I was nine. Now it’s all either gone and left me scarred.

It’s like life’s beaten me up and left me for dead.
Everyone’s shouting at me “stay with us, you can make it.” Which makes me wonder what’s beyond the walls, but I’m not sure if I have the energy to stand up from my slumber and find out just yet.

I remember on our last weekend workshop on the counselling foundation degree, the tutors had spread toys out across the floor for us to see what we identified with, in relation to the course coming to an end.

I chose a butterfly, because I didn’t know where I was going next. I wanted to flutter around and land on what ever I fancied and give it a go; see what happens and see what it feels like to do different things.

I still feel like that butterfly moment is coming, and these castle walls are my safe cocoon. I’m growing the wings to go on my adventure, but I don’t think they’re ready just yet.

Beyond the wall I hope to find a career in writing, I see a published version of my book with a pretty cover and my name at the bottom. My friends are waiting for me, ready for a natter and a cuppa, and I see a baby wrapped in a cosy blanket waiting to be transferred to my arms.

I can see it all, and it’s all what I am dying for, but I can’t help but worry it’s all a mirage.

When my wings are ready, I’ll flutter up to the top of the wall and I’ll see what awaits. But until then I’ll stay in my cocoon and save up my energy.

It’s safe in here.

Even too much of a good thing can be too much.

I like to think I’m pretty good at self-care, but I’ve come to realise I’m actually pretty terrible at it. Despite writing about it, learning about it and reading countless articles about it, I am still not quite able to get the hang of it.

I seem to get mixed up between what I should be doing, what I want to do and self-care. They all seem to cling together in my mind and become this big ball of scariness that I end up ignoring, much to my detriment.

Honestly, I’m not sure when the last time I indulged in a bit of self-care was! Apart from the daily listen to music, but that’s more of a necessity rather than self-care. I do find myself relaxing and watching one of my favourite YouTubers stream on Twitch, or the odd episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, however I tell myself this is not self-care – this is laziness, and this is where my problem lay.

It’s like I have this tiny version of myself on my shoulder that screams at me daily, “WHY ARE YOU WASING TIME? WHY AREN’T YOU WORKING? YOU’RE SO LAZY! OH MY GOD!” I wish she would just shut up.

Watching the TV has become what feels like a shameful experience for me, because I’m always telling myself I should be doing something. Whether that be housework, jotting down some ideas for a blog post, or brainstorming some more creative writing; it’s all something I should be doing, but really, some days they’re the last things I want to do.

Even when I’m at my day job, I am constantly telling myself I’m wasting time because I “should be using this time to think creatively.” I’m not sure when I became this strange creative monster!

Writing has always been a pleasure for me, and often my form of self-care, but over the last year I have relied on it so much that it’s become all I’ve known. I used my writing as a way to escape my day-to-day, and although I have loved every second of my creativity, it really is exhausting being switched on to it every minute, of every day.

It’s like being wired into a TV screen and some else is switching the channels every second. I can’t settle into any of it, and I have no idea what’s going on!

Recently I’ve come to realise, with my lack of self-care and my 24/7 creativity, I’ve actually reached a strange point of burn out. Which feels so wrong to say, because how can something you love contribute to burn out? But even too much of a good thing can be too much. Which means I need to take a break.

To think about my own world, instead of a fictional world, and look at the people around me rather than characters. It’s time to experience the real world for a little bit, as crap as it may be sometimes.

And so far so good, I’m a few days into my ‘creative holiday’ and my mind feels a lot less like a TV and much more peaceful. I mean, its still chaos don’t get me wrong, but a more chilled kind of chaos; a chaos I can cope with.

I can’t help but think a break from my characters and some time on me, will be beneficial to both myself and my creativity. It is time for me to drop my bags of guilt on the floor and walk away from them, and time to pack my characters away into their book shaped box to relax for a little while, ready for them to leap back out and begin to scream at me about what I need to write about next.

And at least if I have my break, (and figure out some self-care) I’ll have the capacity to be able to write about what they shout at me.

Breaks are good; they are helpful, and they are necessary. And maybe breaks are a form of self-care in themselves.

…maybe I do have the hang of self-care after all.

People can be wrong.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been the kind of person to take on other people’s opinions of myself. I’m a bit of a sponge to those around me, which has always been my downfall. I’m not sure why I am so open to instantly take on beliefs of family, friends, acquaintances and complete strangers but if I hear something, I seem to take it on as the truth.

That being said, I don’t seem to do this with positive opinions, only the bad ones; which says a lot about me.

When I was younger my entire existence was based on the opinions of others, and they became the foundation of my adulthood too. As well as being a sponge, I’ve always had a sharp tongue, (a trait I think I inherited from my fathers side of the family) and so even though it may have seemed to those around me that I wasn’t a sponge, I was.

A sponge with a sharp tongue, now that’s a strange visual.

Last year I gave up dying my hair and decided to begin letting my blonde hair grow out again, which is something I’ve not seen since I first dyed my hair black when I was sixteen. (A whole twelve years ago!) I dyed my hair because I was told it was ugly and it should be changed. It’s only since I’ve started growing my hair out and noticing all the compliments I’ve had, that I’ve realised – people can be wrong.

In fact, people for the most part usually are wrong. But even though I know this, and I see when people are wrong, I still manage to slip into my old ways and let it drag me down.

Within minutes I manage to go from “I know they’re talking rubbish” to “Oh god, they must be right!” and the change I feel in myself in terrifying. This strange version of me takes over, a version where I need constant validation to feel okay, and while we all need validation sometimes, it’s not something to base your being on.

This is something I’ve been struggling with again recently, in particular, while at work. Trying new things and learning is something I’ve always enjoyed, and so now I’m not at university anymore, work is where I’m trying to learn. As much as I am enjoying learning other things, I’m being met with negativity, masked as reassurance, which often catches me off guard. “Learning will be helpful for finding a new job.” I never said I wanted a new job, and so my mind starts to spin:

‘I’m terrible at my job, I should leave’
‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’
‘I’m stupid.’
‘Why do I bother?’
‘They’re totally right; I should look for a new job.’

I’ll be honest with you, when this happened, I let my mind run away with itself for a few hours. I was telling myself over and over how useless I am, but then a switch was flicked, and I realised that, none of this was what that person said, and more importantly, that’s not who I am.

I’m good at my job, I work hard, and I try my best in everything I do. One day I will get a new job, but I’m not going to leave right now because someone told me it would be a good idea! It seems bizarre to see that written down because that’s how my mind works. “…find a new job.” Turns into “I have to leave. They think I should leave.”

It’s so easy for me to think this way, (Gee, I’ve been doing it for twenty eight years!) but I’m trying so hard to retrain my brain think more helpfully toward myself.

Something my therapists have often told me is to look for the evidence, and usually there isn’t any, and I can squeeze the opinions from the sponge and get on with my day.

Opinions flow like water, everyone has them, but we’re in charge of whether we soak them up or not. We’re not going to dunk a sponge into dirty water to clean ourselves, so why should we do that emotionally?

We shouldn’t.

Us spongey folk deserve the nicest water and the nicest words, especially from ourselves.

I can’t turn back now.

It feels like a long time since I last sat down to write a blog post! It was only two weeks ago, but it feels so much longer. Yes, I seem to have accidently taken a week off last week; I had every intention of writing a post, but it never happened. Instead, I’ve been busy with ‘book stuff’ instead.

The entire idea of having a published book is still a fairly new thing to me, and so I feel like even though I’m going through the motions to get to that goal, I am just winging it and learning as I go.

For as long as I can remember I described being an author as ‘the dream’, but I never pursued it; I never thought I could. Which is strange to think about really, because I don’t tend to limit myself in anything, if I want to give it a try, I generally do. Which makes this process a bit more daunting because I never thought I’d get here.

It’s funny actually, as I write that I get that Spongebob meme in my mind where Plankton is saying ‘I don’t know. I never thought I’d get this far.’ Which is actually an image I used to describe how I felt beginning my Foundation Degree in Counselling. So maybe this is just how I feel about everything: I expect to fail, it’s all a bit of surprise really.

I’ve always loved writing, thinking of stories and building characters. When I was a child my friends would be drawing and I would be writing at great lengths characters and stories I wanted to write. But I never actually managed to finish anything, and so I thought I was incapable of ever finishing something; and that remained true until last year.

I come from a family where if we want to do something, we don’t learn how to do it before hand, we start it and figure it out as we go, and this is completely what I’m doing with writing. I had an idea, so I made some notes, them notes got too much so I put them in order, then the notes in order got bigger and before I knew it I was sat with a finished story thinking ‘what next?’.

I concluded the next stage would be proof read it approximately ten thousand times and then ask others to read it. To get feedback and to add to it, making it the best it can be: The beta reader stage.

As this is my first go at anything of this sort, I decided that sharing the blurb on my Facebook page and asking if anyone might want to help me out, would be a good start. So last week, that is finally what I plucked up the courage to do.

I feel like from the outside, it looks easy. “Yeah, she just put the blub on Facebook and got a few readers.” But my goodness, I wish it had been that easy!

It took weeks to build up the courage to even put my blurb into a picture that I could upload. I even nearly uploaded it a few times before I gained the confidence to press POST and share it with my followers.

The thing is, it’s my world. A world that has become my safe place for the last year and a half. I’ve spoken about how my world was turned upside down whilst I’ve been writing it, and I would (and still do) retreat to it to feel safe again. The characters aren’t just characters in a book, they’re the only friends I’ve been able to see every day through the pandemic, and they’re the only piece of stability I’ve had while my real world went a bit crazy.

When my life has felt so unsure, the one thing that has been sure is them. My characters and my story. And now I’m sharing that safe place with other people, and that’s really scary.

Of course, I’m a worse-case-scenario kind of girl, so my mind leaps to the conclusions that the beta readers might hate the plot, hate the characters, and think my writing is terrible. So naturally, I decided I needed to reread the entire thing to settle my mind before sending it off to my new readers; I gave myself three days. Three days to read the entire thing and make any corrections that needed to be made. Three days where I was working my day job too may I add, so every spare second, I had my eyes glued to my phone or tablet reading it all over.

Doing this definitely helped settle my worrying mind as there were parts that made me feel excited, parts that made me feel deep sadness and even parts I had forgotten about! It feels big headed to say, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it all over again.

Although I still worry deep down about all the ‘what ifs’, but I think I’m ready to let it stretch it’s legs in someone else’s mind and hope for the best.

I always remember at the start of one of my college years, there was a day of activities we all had to take part in. I suppose it was to make friends, but painfully shy me spoke to no body all day, and to make it worse the girls I was in a group with didn’t want to take part in any of the activities. (They were too bothered about their hair going curly in the rain) One of the activities was a leap of faith, in which we had to climb up this thirty foot poll and leap off the top, letting your peers hold on to the rope your harness was attached to.

Sharing my book feels much like that.

I’m stood at the top of the leap, wobbling about, terrified. And my beta readers and friends are the people at the bottom who are deciding on whether to catch me or let me hit the ground. When I make the leap, it will be when I am sending my story off to publishers, and that thought is so scary right now, but one thing at a time; lets decide whether I can make the leap at all first!

So, this is it. I’m in the next stage of what-ever-this-is, waiting to see if it’s safe to jump or not. Weather it’s safe or not, I’ll jump one day anyway, because I’ve come this far, I can’t turn back now!

“Let’s go.”

I chose to do something different this week as I’m feeling much more creative in a fiction way rather than a lets-talk-about-life way, so I used a prompt from the good old “642 things to write about book”.

“Write for 10 minutes about what is running through a husband-to-be’s head while his wife-to-be is walking down the aisle to the alter where he stands.”

I set a timer and wrote for ten minutes, then had a cheeky edit for about half an hour and this is what happened.

Enjoy.

*

Dan’s heart was beating like a drum, he could feel it throughout his entire body, as if he was being hit repeatedly. He turned to his best man, Justin, stood next to him and whispered, “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Wide eyed, Justin stared back at him, “It’s a bit late for that now.” he chuckled, but Dan stared back at him, letting him know he was serious. “What, really?”
Dan nodded in reply as the music began to play, signifying his bride was about to walk down the aisle toward him.

It was too late.

His hands clammy, mouth dry, and his heart on the verge of either a panic attack, or a heart attack; the latter looking appealing, as leaving in an ambulance at top speed sounded all but perfect to him at this moment.

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he put his head down and concentrated on this being over. It all felt wrong, he wasn’t happy. The music seemed to be getting louder with every deep breath he took. ‘Why did I agree to this?’ he wondered to himself.
“You can do this, you’re just having cold feet, it’s normal.” Justin patted his arm, bringing Dan back to reality as his eyes opened and readjusted to the warm, natural light that poured into the church.

Looking over his shoulder, he watched her walk down the aisle in what seemed like slow motion. Her giant dress taking up a lot of the aisle, her tiara twinkling from her perfectly curled hair, and her smile shinning from her face like a lighthouse Dan’s life was about to crash into.

Her smile landing on everyone but him, as her eyes skimmed past him and took in everyone in the pews gasping at how gorgeous she looked. She did look amazing, but Dan knew the person behind the smile; she wasn’t as amazing as she looked.

“Hi.” She whispered, standing next to him, keeping her eyes forward and on anything but him.
“You can be seated.” The vicar told their family and friends and a loud shuffle of everyone sitting down signified the beginning of the ceremony.

Their words stabbing him like tiny knives, he listened to their lies in the form of their vows.
“I do.” She smiled at him.
“And do you, take Mia as your wife?”

The air seemed thick, like it was hard for him to breath and the silence seemed to last for hours.
“Babe?” She whispered. “This is where you say I do.” She tried to laugh through her anxiety, but still Dan was stuck.

He took a second to look to his left at everyone who was congregated with them today. “I…” He paused “I. I can’t.” He let go of her hand. “I’m sorry.” He stuttered turning to his best man, telling him with his eyes he needed to leave, and quickly.

Running down the aisle, family and friend’s once amazed gasps, were now gasps in horror. He ran outside and into the bright sunshine that burnt is now crying eyes. His legs carried him until he saw a bench and he collapsed on to it, his panic finally bursting from him. He pulled his lilac coloured tie away from his neck aggressively and threw it to the floor.

Justin caught up with him and took a seat beside him, taking of his own tie in unity and leaving it on the floor. He pulled the top button of his shirt open and told Dan, “Let’s go.”

The Small Happies.

Many years ago, on one of my regular trips to Whitby, I bought a small wall plaque that read ‘Happiness is a way of life, not a destination.’ because I feel like that sentence reflects how I feel about life and happiness, and it’s always stuck with me.

I think a lot of people put their happiness at the end of a road that is going to be hard to get down. You know, them “I’ll be happy when…” sentences we all allow to spill from our mouth every so often. The ‘I’ll be happy when it’s the weekend’, the ‘happy when I’ve lost three stone’, the ‘happy when I’m out of town’. Of course, we probably all will be happy when we hit them aims or events, however, I think we forget to take notice of the small happies when we’re so focused on the big happies to come.

I have big happies to look forward to, or strive for, like when I get another job, or when I’m finally stood in a venue again waiting for a band to appear on stage. But for me, the big happies don’t come often enough to rely on them, so I’ve learnt to live for the small happies in life instead.

Like the feeling of excitement when I find a new song I love, when I laugh so hard it hurts, when that cup of coffee feels like it touches my soul, or when the cat does that slow-eye-close-thing, to tell me she loves me. They’re all really small things, but how rubbish would life be without them?

On Christmas Eve 2020, I spent most of the day on my own. My boyfriend was at work until late, and I never have any Christmas Eve plans (and in a pandemic, I had even less!) so I spent most of the day cleaning and tidying. Now, I’m not usually someone who enjoys cleaning, but this day I was into it; I was dedicated to making sure the entire house was as perfect as I could make it. Of course, none of this really mattered because no one was able to come to see it, and we were out of the house on Christmas day, but none of this mattered to me: I was on a mission.

My house has three floors, so tidying and cleaning the entire thing wasn’t an easy task, and when I had finished, I head back downstairs to celebrate that I had absolutely nothing left to do. The house was perfect, all presents were wrapped and where they needed to be; it was officially Christmas time for me.

After I hid the hoover away from the cowering cat, I put some Christmas music on and sat on the floor in the living room where I noticed it was snowing outside. I sat and watched it while my cat rubbed her wet nose all over my hand, demanding love and attention.

Sitting there, watching the snow fall, listening to Michael Buble and cuddling my cat, while our black and gold Christmas tree glistened in the corner of the room; it was perfect.

2020 was a sad year, but in that moment I was happy.

Taking note of all the small happies around me made me cry, and reminded me just how good life can feel when I take the time to feel all the small happies around me.

I will remember that moment forever.

Life can feel pretty rubbish sometimes, but I believe if you take your binoculars off the future and away from the bigger picture for a moment every day to notice the small happies – you might be surprised.

Writing in chaos.

While I’m at work, my mind travels elsewhere and independently works on my writing while my body is stacking shelves. I become so excited about the scenes, characters, and blog posts I plan on writing. I get so lost in the ideas and they keep me going, only when I get home I’m too tired, and all I can manage is a quick email to myself about what it is I’ve been thinking about.

My days off are my writing days, I use one to write a blog post and the rest will be story writing; I always like to be doing something, I can’t possibly just have a full day off!

On Sunday I had set my heart on writing the things I’d been thinking about all week. I rushed through all the boring things like cleaning and tidying, so I could have as much time as possible to write. I finally got comfortable on my sofa, put some music on, opened my laptop, opened the word document and… nothing. The scenes still playing in my head, but no words coming out on the screen; I had no idea where to begin and a giant case of writer’s block.

That blinking line of the page feeling as it if was mocking me, taunting me, telling me ‘well write something then…’ and so I tried. In the past I’ve often taken a deep breath, and just began typing without thought, but for some reason I couldn’t do it, and when I did write, it felt clunky; like I didn’t know my story or my characters. It didn’t feel nice.

I continued to force myself to write, but it was taking so much energy. Like a car that doesn’t have petrol, so you’re pushing it about instead – you’re going to get to your destination, but the journey isn’t going to be very fun, and writing really didn’t feel fun at all.

I wrote a few hundred words and decided enough was enough, I’d come back when I had fuelled up. But just as I was about to save and close the document, inspiration hit me and before I knew it, I had three thousand words on the page.

For the last six months (or there abouts) I’ve been editing my novel; rejigging sentences, adding different words, adding in missed punctuation. But now I’ve finished all of that, I’ve opened up my ideas document with paragraphs and ideas for the sequel, and that’s what I was struggling with.

I’ve become so used to reading and editing, that I think I forgot how to write!

When editing I’m conscious of getting everything perfect, make sure it makes sense and that I like it, but writing doesn’t need to be that way. Writing can just be a jumble of ideas, a mess of a sentence that turns into a mess of a paragraph, that is in the totally wrong place in the document, and it’s all okay.

When I write, it really is a mess. I write parts as they come to me, not necessarily in order. The clunky part I wrote the other night is a part of the beginning, and the part that flowed as I nearly gave up is a part of the middle. I’ve also already written a big part of the end, and none of this is in order. I’m not used to writing in this chaos!

So, I think this is why writers block hit me: I’m writing in a way I’m not used to anymore. I need to learn to take that deep breath and trust what comes out of my mind and on to the page and realise it doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else but myself.

It’s alright if it’s a mess, it’s supposed to be in the beginning! All that matters is that I continue to make a mess, until I eventually have something to tidy up.