Returning to art after years away has been joyful, emotional and well more recently an existential nightmare. But here's a self portrait of me and my favourite Starbucks drink I drew before I succumbed to the entropy of my existential crisis.
Tag: grief
If You Buy That, You Will Eat It
I’ve been doing recovery “wrong”, apparently. I eat protein bars, track my food, weigh myself and make choices that would horrify parts of the recovery internet. And yet, I’m recovering. Here are some recent wins - including buying food despite Corrupted Clippy helpfully warning me that, horrifyingly, I might actually eat it.
The Grief of a Meteor Shower
I watched the Perseid meteor shower expecting the same wonder I’d always felt, but grief was there too. Beneath the excitement was the absence of my best friend, and the person I was before she died. I still love the stars. I just wish, sometimes, that they were magic.
The Return of the Invisible Surveyor, the Doctor’s Appointment and All the Thoughts in Between
Four hours of sleep, one mysteriously functional window and the return of the Invisible Surveyor. Between housing chaos and a surprisingly useful doctor’s appointment, I think about anxiety, OCD, perimenopause, grief, recovery and the strange guilt of resting - before retreating back to Night City with Greggs and exhaustion.
The Day You Would Have Turned 47
Yesterday should have been my best friend's 47th birthday. Instead, I spent the day waiting for a surveyor who never arrived. Somewhere between frustration, grief, Commander Shepard, new socks and mushrooms, I realised I wasn't mourning a wasted day at all. I was mourning the years she never got to live.
The Day the Light Came Back.
I thought I was writing about scaffolding. It turns out I was writing about friendship. This is the story of Squigeon, Goose, a year without pigeons, and why the day they came back brought more than just the sunlight back into my life.
When the Chaos Stops
Turns out impulsively destroying furniture was an excellent distraction. Unfortunately, once the chaos stopped, my brain made up for lost time. Heatwaves, recovery, routine, British summer tapas and one very confused Jellycat croissant all somehow ended up in the same blog post.
This Is Not Just Any Grief, It’s Marks and Spencer Grief.
When Marks & Spencer announced it was closing, I was surprised by how upset I felt. This isn’t really a story about a supermarket. It’s a story about friendship, Christmas sandwich competitions, Yorkshire puddings, grief, and how sometimes we leave pieces of the people we love in unexpected places.
Mixed (Episode) Feelings
The internet prefers suffering that is tidy, inspiring and tied up with a bow. Unfortunately, my brain didn’t get the memo. This is not a post about overcoming anything. It’s about what happens when you stop waiting until you’re better before allowing yourself to be seen.
The Collapse and the Suspicious Croissant
Recovery did not just bring weight gain back. It brought me back too. My intensity, my emotions, my curiosity, my writing, my ability to feel present in the world again. The terrifying part is that becoming yourself again after grief means learning how to sit with an entirely new version of yourself and more importantly, not running away.
