I didn’t expect today to be anything special. Honestly, after the last few weeks, I’ve been moving through life like someone whose brain is still buffering. My energy has been weird, my mood has been all over the place, my sinuses are in a constant state of anger and my eating plan has felt like a science experiment I accidentally enrolled myself in.

Then today happened.

It started with the rain hammering against my window – the kind of Welsh rain that doesn’t fall so much as attack you – and me realising I had to go out and get my son’s glasses. I didn’t feel particularly optimistic about it; I just assumed it would be another exhausted, foggy day where I pushed through because that’s what I do.

But something shifted.
Something tiny.
Something I almost didn’t want to admit to myself in case it vanished the moment I looked at it.

Lowering my meal plan last week had already been blowing my mind with how much it helped my body. But today made me realise it might be helping my life a little too – in ways I hadn’t expected, and honestly didn’t trust at first.

This isn’t a story about a dramatic breakthrough or some big inspirational moment. It’s just about a rainy day, a pair of glasses, an accidental Night City speedwalk, and a small flicker of something I haven’t felt in a long time.

I think the phrase for it is:
being alive.

Heavy Rain On My Window

I woke up early this morning to the sound of heavy rain pattering against my window. Today was the day I needed to pick up my son’s new glasses. He’d broken his favourite pair last week and was utterly devastated. One of the arms had snapped clean off, taking part of the frame with it.

He’d left them on his bedroom shelf before going back to Uni, and since I had to go into town anyway that day for my medication, I quietly slipped into his room, put the broken glasses in my bag, and took them to Specsavers as a surprise.

He had no idea. When he texted me from Uni asking if I could go into his room and “have a look at the glasses,” I told him I was already in town getting my meds and that my arms weren’t long enough to reach them from there. Meanwhile, I was literally sat in Specsavers holding the glasses in my hands.

I texted him on the way home, once I knew they’d take a week to replace. I can’t keep a surprise for that long without saying something, and he would absolutely have wondered where they’d disappeared to. He was so relieved and happy when he realised what I’d done.

My son is blind in one eye due to our genetic condition, and short-sighted in the other. Glasses aren’t optional for him – they’re essential. Thankfully, he had a spare pair, but these were his most comfortable ones. Given that his degree is a reading-heavy one and he actually needs to see, I wanted to spare him the stress of arranging it all himself. I love doing little acts of service for him.

Specsavers took a week to get the new pair, partly because the frames were broken beyond repair, and partly because they were extremely confused about why I was doing this for him. I must have explained five separate times that he’s at Uni, and I was picking them up for him because he needs them. They acted weirdly suspicious about the whole situation.

Okay but… If I had him trapped in a cupboard at home unable to come himself, why on earth would I bother replacing his glasses? He wouldn’t need to see in there, would he?

But finally, today – one week of him tolerating the less comfortable pair that hurt his tiny ears – it was time to go and collect the new ones in the rain.

Walking in the Rain

I wasn’t bothered by the rain at all – I LOVE the rain. Even being out in it. Even getting absolutely drenched. The forecast said we were getting a month’s worth of rain in twenty-four hours and honestly? Ideal. I was already in a good mood because I was excited to fix my son’s glasses problem for him. He’d been looking forward to them all week.

Since lowering my meal plan a week ago, my energy has been so much better, and my body was actually looking forward to moving. I put on music from Cyberpunk 2077 and walked to town like I was on a boss mission, my feet hitting the pavement in time with the rhythm of Gate K9.

I was trying to actively remember everything I needed from town. In the end, I only remembered my son’s glasses and my decaf coffee – priorities, apparently – and completely forgot things like toilet paper. I may as well have been off in my own little world. My brain clearly needs a little longer to download the rest of the energy DLC my body has already received.

But in between trying (and failing) to concentrate on errands, I was thinking a lot about recovery – specifically how much lowering my meal plan has helped me. I noticed it instantly from how bouncy my legs felt while walking instead of feeling like two chunks of concrete. Just last week I was crying at the thought of leaving my house because my body was screaming at me not to do anything at all.

It’s still mind-blowing to me that food noise, mental hunger, fatigue, and intense cravings can also happen when you’re eating too high of a surplus. I’d been completely brainwashed by All In dogma into believing those symptoms always meant “eat more,” when in reality my body was struggling with an overloaded surplus. Now that my intake actually matches my needs, I finally have energy again.

My hunger and fullness cues have gone back to normal. I’m not thinking about food constantly. I can blog again, do macramé again, be myself again. I always assumed more food = more energy – but apparently not for my metabolism. I’m still in a small surplus, just not the huge one I was in before, and the difference is night and day. I’m not even missing sourdough anymore because the food noise is gone. If any of this was truly about repair or “healing hunger,” then lowering my calories should have made everything worse, not better. But All In isn’t science. Overfeeding studies however, absolutely back up what my body is doing.

Feeling relieved – and actually feeling like me again – I reached Specsavers and collected my son’s glasses.

Welcome to Night City

There was a big sign in Specsavers in Welsh, welcoming people to the store in our city. For some reason it hit me all at once how much I love living here. I turned to the cashier and did the very Welsh thing of saying, “Bit wet mind, isn’t it?!” and she laughed and said, “Well yeah, it’s Wales, isn’t it.” I thought, yes. It is. Home. Lovely weather, lovely country, lovely city – or as Johnny Silverhand would say, “lovely neighbourhood, mwah!”

And then, as usual, I wondered what on earth had come over me for this sudden mood improvement. Then immediately got scared of it, because whenever I feel good, a part of me is convinced everything will collapse in on itself. I shook my head like an Etch A Sketch to get rid of the doomies trying to ruin my day and decided to lean into the good instead. The lovely Specsavers lady polished up my son’s glasses beautifully, and I left back out into the extremely bit-wet rain. By that point I was soaked through, but I honestly didn’t even care.

I had a wander around the shops and decided to get both of us advent calendars. Every single year I look at them and think,“It’s FAR too early for that,” even when it’s November 30th, and then I end up rushing out on December 1st like a chaos goblin looking for a door number one. This year was no different, it was December 1st. I found myself a Biscoff advent calendar – extremely on brand for me – and got my son a Maltesers one because Malteser reindeers are basically his personal religion.

I also picked up some self-care bits since I actually have the energy for that now. My hair has sprouted so many new greys since recovery and the perimenopause ramp-up that it’s starting to look like I’ve been painting a ceiling badly – just patches of bright silver along the roots. That’s the thing people don’t realise about self-care: you have to have the ability and energy to do it in the first place.

I grabbed my decaffeinated coffee pods for my new machine too, because apparently I’ve blasted through an entire box in record time. It’s been helping with everything – even the mould allergy symptoms for some reason. And yes, I still have the mould problem, but I think eating too much was just one more thing on top of it that my body couldn’t cope with. Now that I’m not overloaded, I feel so much better, even though I’m still having daily nosebleeds, coughing and my sinuses rioting every five minutes. Going outside helps too – I still wear a mask which is BRILLIANT for allergens – it’s just coming home or sleeping in it that’s the issue.

Armed with all my goods, and having completely forgotten toilet paper, cleanser, and every other thing I intended to buy, I headed home. I was going to go to Starbucks, but since I’d already spent money on advent calendars and hair dye, I decided Greggs was the frugal queen move. A festive bake and a Greggs coffee is still cheaper than one Starbucks coffee.

So with E-Dubble and the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack blasting through my noise-cancelling headphones, I began the trek home.

Go With the Flow

I pressed play on Gate K9 again on my YouTube Music app to walk home. I always walk with my feet to the beat – it makes walking less monotonous and turns the whole thing automatic. Walking normally isn’t automatic for me with my joints. It’s constant effort: left, right, left-oh god, uneven pavement-adjust, wobble, right, ouch, hip hurts, knee hurts. Uneven pavements feel like being stood up on a bus.

But walking fast, using the physics of motion and a solid beat, lets me slip into the song without falling down. And that’s exactly what happened. One minute I was listening to Gate K9, feet hitting the floor perfectly on each beat, and the next minute I became suddenly aware of everything around me – like I’d dropped into a different state of consciousness.

The cars whooshing past and splashing in the distance were like a candlelit orchestra, muted by the roar of my noise-cancelling headphones. My feet slapping into puddles made little ripples that mesmerised me. The rain splashing up the backs of my legs from my fast pace reminded me I was alive – and that I actually like being alive to experience this. I always love the rain, but today it felt different. Today it felt full of life.

Maybe it’s all the “Driving in the rain in Tokyo” videos I watch to fall asleep, but this rain was real, and I was somehow still here to feel it. And that hit me. Because after everything I’ve been through with my relapse and recovery, being alive to experience something so ordinary-but-beautiful isn’t something I take for granted anymore.

I was so connected in this flow state that, despite fully intending to stop at Greggs, I reached my building before I even realised I’d walked right past it. Honestly, if that song had lasted forever, I might have walked forever with it. I guess today wasn’t meant for festive bakes – it was meant for remembering I’m alive, and that I live in Wales, and that somehow both of those things feel good today.

I got home still happy, despite my lack of Festive Bake and hot coffee, and waited for my son to come home so I could present him with his advent calendar and his newly fixed glasses – so he could actually see the numbers on it.

My Son Can See Again and I Can See Him

My son came home not long after I did. He walked into the living room absolutely drenched, and I was still drenched too. He said, “Bit wet, isn’t it?” and I said, “I know, it’s mad – I even said that to the Specsavers lady. I literally went, ‘Bit wet mind, isn’t it?’” We both laughed, and then I excitedly told him I’d got him an advent calendar.

He lit up instantly.
“I’ve been thinking about advent calendars all day. I was going to get myself one – you must’ve been reading my brain waves again. Thank you!”

And then, like the Monty Python holy grail, I presented him with his glasses. He mounted the sacred vessels of vision upon his visage and has not taken them off since.
“They fit me better – they’re PERFECT, thank you!”

I said, “Yay, you look more like you now.”

He disappeared into his room for an online lecture, and I collapsed onto the sofa with a Starbucks pod coffee – missing my festive bake, but looking forward to my daily burrito ritual. Within minutes my eyes were burning from the day’s excitement, my hip screamed so loudly it echoed down my thigh and hip and my ankle started playing up again. My ankle has been hurting whenever I rest, and honestly, I think I did it while macramé-ing a bow the other day.

Macramé puts me into a hyperfocus trance where I sit in stress positions like I’m five years old and not forty-two. I become completely unaware that my foot has stopped receiving blood, my spine is shaped like a question mark, and my bladder is about to file a complaint. I forget I’m a human being with physical needs, and time stops existing entirely… until my ankle hurts for days afterwards.

My son emerged from his lecture and we had dinner together while watching Eastenders. I said, “You know what, today was a really good day – getting your glasses.” He laughed, in that way where I know he’s happy too and in the way of him understanding my brand of chaos.

I genuinely love doing acts of service for him. Honestly, he helps me just by existing. My love for him makes me want to do things for him, and that in turn makes me feel good, because I get to see him all happy and cared for.

Now I’m writing this and chilling for the rest of the night, burrito in hand, all of my joints complaining, macramé-induced back pain humming in the background. All that’s left is to open Door 1 on my Biscoff advent calendar together with my son, since it’s officially December.

Time is so weird.

At the End of the Day

Lowering my meal plan is still frying my brain. I genuinely didn’t expect it to help this much – with my energy, my movement, my mood… my everything. I’m trying not to think too hard about the fact I feel a bit better, because knowing my luck, if I acknowledge it too loudly it’ll run away like a Minecraft cat I’m trying to tame.

But weirdly… today I’m glad I’m alive.
Even though I’m exhausted by the simple act of existing.
Even though my joints and sinuses are on strike and my brain is downloading energy DLC at 1% per hour.
Even though tomorrow I’ll have to pay for it and I might wake up feeling different.

Today was good.
And for someone like me, that’s massive.

The music that sent me into a trance on my walk :-