Hi frens,

I thought I’d give you a little introduction to my current situation, I will delve deeper into these topics in later posts but I thought I would catch you up to what is currently occurring in my life so you have an idea what my blog is, who I am, and what I am currently going through.

In January 2020 I lost my 40 year old best friend, her nickname and WordPress name was WeeGee so I will refer to her here on my blog that way, to triple negative breast cancer (cancer sucks and takes all the best people). She was an amazing, unique and talented person. I actually met her here on WordPress and she became an in real-life friend. I met her in 2012 and we became best friends immediately. Since her death, I have really struggled to not drown in grief, and even tried to instead swim as hard as I could away from it because drowning just wasn’t an option for me. I am a mum of a 19 year old and throughout the mess of the pandemic they were taking exams and dealing with all of the stress associated with that, University choices etc and I felt they needed me and I was concerned I couldn’t be the best and most supportive mum I could be if I felt my overwhelming intense emotions.

I isolated myself for the next 4 years. I rarely even used social media, barely left my house, deleted my old WordPress blog where I met WeeGee because it was too painful to even be there, hyper focused on being the best mum I could possibly be (which I actually do not regret), and hid in Cyberpunk 2077. I was seeking all of the comfort I could find whilst I felt like I was constantly being chased by the shadow of this overwhelming grief which I was too afraid to feel because I still don’t think her death is something I can move on from. So I was attracted to the pretty but dystopian neon lights of Night City in Cyberpunk 2077, to be somewhere where I could escape my own storyline.

It’s a danger pretty, here in Night City

Cyberpunk 2077 allowed me to be V for a while (I’ve actually played the game for 1400 hours so a while in this context is quite a significant period of time), everything was going fantastic and I was really enjoying exploring Night City and learning all of the lore and taking in the sights of the city, but the game unexpectedly turned on my hiding by having my character’s best friend, Jackie, die. There I was playing the game to escape my own grief of losing my best friend, and the exact same thing was happening to the character I was playing as. It felt like someone had used a netrunning hack on me, it hit me so deeply on a level I didn’t expect. I guess, I realised no matter how hard or fast I try to run, or how much I hide, the grief would follow me wherever I go, even if it’s somewhere fictional like Night City.

The rest of the game is V dealing with this loss, and also struggling with her own mortality and legacy, due to the events of the Heist that took her best friend away from her. I could see myself in V, not the whole obsession with taking down Arasaka agents with Tomahawks part, but the fight she puts in to just keep moving forward despite her grief and the challenges she was facing and like V, I have never known what I want. I know what I am running from, I know what I am fighting, but I have never known what I am running to, or what I am fighting for. I felt deeply connected to her. In being deeply connected with her it allowed me to slowly open the door and feel my own feelings more safely. After all, I could convince myself they were V’s feelings or my feelings about the game.

In September 2023 the DLC for Cyberpunk 2077 was released, I played it immediately and again I saw my grief story echoed on the screen. So Mi, or Songbird, reached deep into Vs soul to connect with her, much the same way WeeGee did with me. We were connected through our shared struggles, through needing to fight our brains and like So Mi and V we worked together whilst deeply connected. I didn’t feel alone anymore in my fighting, or my hiding we were both little caged birds together still trying to sing. At the end of Phantom Liberty, depending on the option you choose, of course, Songbird has to leave, either to escape or to die.

It was at this point of the game, that I couldn’t avoid my own feelings anymore. I had not properly processed the fact that WeeGee had also left forever, or the big gaping hole she left in my life. I still, even after the massive crying session on finishing the story, tried to run from grief though so scared I was going to drown, and tried to grasp onto anything else I could use to hide or escape. It took until her anniversary on 13th January this year. I was standing watching the stars and was present in the moment watching the stars with my teen (being in the moment is the absolute enemy when you’re running from something), and this wave of grief just hit me so hard. I wanted to share this moment looking at the crisp sky with beautiful stars with WeeGee and by thinking that, I finally truly realised she was gone forever and couldn’t hide from it anymore.

Needless to say, I then proceeded to drown. You can’t run from something for 4 years and not drown because now it was grief for WeeGee and everything else that had happened in the last 4 years that I hadn’t dealt with either. I was too busy running from grief to deal with anything else that was happening in the present. My emotions became an absolute mess and my brain was like the aftermath of a disaster, everything, everywhere all at once. At that point, I had been in anorexia recovery for 12 years, I actually met WeeGee during my initial recovery, and while I had lapses in those 12 years I always managed to pull myself out of it and WeeGee would help me by just existing, this time though, I became stuck and I’m still there 10 months later. I guess I have realised how much she was a beacon of light for me to stay in recovery when things got tough because now I don’t have that light guiding me. She was my lighthouse, and without her, I crashed straight into the rocks and fell off my recovery ship into the cold deep dark below.

So that’s where I’m currently at, in the cold deep. During my descent, I became aware of the existence of Jellycat bears though, they’ve been a little life raft to me. I deeply miss the comfort and presence of WeeGee, so I sought comfort in Jellycat bears. They remind me of the comfort she brought to my life and make me feel all soft and fluffy inside. Her favourite animal was a penguin, which, fun fact, is actually my second favourite animal after bears so I also do have a collection of Jellycat penguins in her honour. I hug them when I miss her the most, it’s hard too though, they also remind me so much of her that sometimes they remind me of her absence. All of my penguins have names associated with her, one is called WeeGee for instance, and one is called Jellytot as she always used to say “Love you lots like Jellytots” and the large one is called Pesto because she just would have been so excited about that giant heckin chonker of a baby penguin that was born in Melbourne.

I just thought it would be important for you to know the emotional significance of Cyberpunk and Jellycats and what they represent, hence why I will keep on keeping on about them. I really appreciate if you’ve read this far and caught up with where I am at. You can expect more detailed posts on everything I have mentioned along with life and Jellycat updates and dealing with navigating an ED again at 40 years old. There will also be plenty of macrame, art, fluffiness of plushies and a bunch of cosy too.

Lastly, WeeGee always used to end her blog posts with a song, I’d like to continue this to keep a little of her blogging alive too. The song lyrics feel like when I met her. She reached out to me and said, “hello” from her world to mine.