Grief, ED recovery, Mental Health and all the lovely things that give my Sisyphean rock meaning
Fatigue might have dominated my week, but it wasn't the whole story. There was an entitled Sharon in Lidl, an unforgettable gift from my son, a wish made on a shooting star, and a reminder that even during the hardest weeks, life still manages to surprise me in the smallest ways.
A simple trip to collect my medication somehow turned into a desert expedition, a nostalgic taxi ride to 2010, a battle with Boots, a cluster headache, an invasion of bush crickets and, somehow, two jars of reduced SunPat peanut butter. Honestly, the universe just wasn’t on my side that day.
After falling in love with a bedroom I’d designed in House Flipper, my son wanted the bed from it. What followed was a day of heavy lifting, confusing instructions, cardboard battles, and the realisation that virtual DIY is considerably easier than the real thing.
On Tuesday, all I had to do was go to the dentist. Instead, I got caught in a torrential downpour, emergency-shopped for a jacket, bought suspiciously specific DIY tools, declared war on a sofa, accidentally created a rage room, cleaned up a communal bin room disaster, and somehow still thought that was normal.
This week I was anxious, trapped in a giant netted cage, fuelled by iced decaf Americanos, and writing essays about asexuality. Somehow, despite all that, blogging has started helping my mental health again. Life is weird, but I’ll take the motivation where I can get it.
I went from brown hair to brown hair via a spectacular detour involving Vantablack ends, Anish Kapoor jokes, a scalp that felt sunburnt, and enough hair dye to chemically alter my postcode. It also turned into an unexpected lesson about how invisible struggle can be.
Still deep in the hole, I’ve been trying to find little lights in the dark anyway. Pigeons by the river, audiobooks that reignited my love of science fiction, Project Hail Mary nights with my son, and tiny moments of peace that didn’t cure me, but reminded me there’s still warmth outside the fear.
Sometimes when I wake up, my anxiety wakes up first. Before I’ve even opened my eyes my brain is already spiralling about weight, Welsh elections, quantum mechanics and whether Biscoff spread contains enough energy to power a small nation. By the end of the day, seagulls, Starbucks and my son helped ground me again.
I hadn’t been to the cinema in over 20 years. Not because I don’t like films, but because my brain thinks enclosed spaces mean I can’t leave. I went anyway. Not because I felt brave, but because it mattered to my son. Turns out, that was enough to make me stay.
It’s been a week of exhaustion, strange half-awake thoughts, and doing life anyway. Somewhere between a musical electrician, a trolley upgrade, and a film I didn’t expect to love, things still happened. Not how I planned, not how I wanted - but I somehow survived and lived anyway.
Absurd Universe 