Pink birthday roses – playing with fairy lights.

There’s a picture on the wall as you enter my family’s home which shows my family at my sister’s graduation. On my birthday, a new friend who dropped by to take me out for lunch saw this picture for the first time, and remarked on how incredibly young I look in it. The Photographer, for since I’m writing about him I best give him a name, had difficulty accepting that the picture was taken only eighteen months previous.

The Photographer stared at the picture in disbelief. I suggested it was the amazing effect of my tan, as before the picture was taken I’d been living in sunny Spain, but really that’s just my insecurities speaking. Nobody wants to suddenly look older. You want to age gracefully, not in sudden spurts caused by life’s brutal stresses.  I know that in the last year and a half I have aged disproportionately, and by the time the Photographer brought the picture up again in conversation again a few days later, I was feeling more accepting of this fact.

However, I’m pretty certain that I do look a lot better now than I did this time last year when I looked (according to the Mother) horrendous. She has such a beautiful way with words.

Last winter my overwhelmed subconscious conducted a revolution in my mind

Shit happens, as one dear friend would shrug his shoulders and say. It does happen, moments that feel cataclysmic, that shake your beliefs and leave you quivering in your skin, feeling like your heart will explode.

I could say so much, but a lump arises in my throat, blocking the feelings from developing into words.

Perhaps I haven’t been writing here so often because I feel like I’ve lost my voice. It’s wrapped up in a cocoon, growing slowly, developing as I look out from within and learn to pay attention to what I’m doing and where I’m going.

Stop, breathe, what’s going on here?

This isn’t an easy idea to implement, but the last year has taught me that identifying that what’s in my best interest is something only I can effectively do, and that I’m bad at it. Anyone else, who might believe they know better, can tell me what they believe is in my best interest, but following someone else’s instructions on how to live life is cumbersome and leads to resentment and confusion and blame. If my mind is going one way and my emotions another, I’m going to be intensely uncomfortable.

There’s a reason why my psychotherapist prods me with questions and waits for me to join the dots. Knowing what I want is my job. She sits back, nestled in her many cushions, and enables me to do the necessary work.

What are we doing? What are we wanting? What do we fear?

They look like such simple questions, but stopping and remembering to ask them, not just chase habits off the edge of the cliff, is not easy.

Each week, the psychotherapist unsettles the ground on which I stand with her little questions. And those weeks I don’t see her, I’m in foreign lands, taking on a role that’s often new to me, fitting into a group or family of strangers, learning how to belong. Learning how to be me against a blank canvas. At the same time, there’s the me of old that’s learning to breathe again: stories skip through the pages of my diaries; I’m painting with watercolours, acrylic and my favourite oils; there’s a click as my camera shutter blinks.  It’s an experiment; I’m playing.

It may sound simple, slow, boring even, but it’s surprisingly hard being gentle to yourself. It’s a gracious act of re-sculpting my mind that I’m undertaking. I’ve never known anything so difficult, nor so full of wonder. This revolution was a reaction to horror, but it is also a beautiful thing.

The year ahead dances in front of me. Tantalising with its potential.