Grief, ED recovery, Mental Health and all the lovely things that give my Sisyphean rock meaning
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.
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 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.
What began as a recovery wobble became a deeper fall into fear, shame, exhaustion, survival behaviours and a literal fire that no longer even felt like an eating disorder. A post about panic, uncertainty, and trying to climb back out while terrified of the surface.
I thought eating more would just mean gaining weight. Instead, everything came back - my energy, my thoughts, my emotions, and parts of myself I’d kept muted. It turns out you can maintain your weight and still be underfuelled, and fixing that doesn’t just change your body. It changes you.
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.
I tried to restore order to my life after gastritis and during cluster headaches. Instead, I burnt Welsh cakes, broke a suitcase, and nearly lost my sanity. Somewhere between entropy, Biscoff, and questionable decisions, I managed to get back on track - slightly more stable, still chaotic, and fully entering my Welsh nan era.
I didn’t realise I was hurting myself, because it didn’t look like harm. It looked like doing the right thing. Pushing through. Not restricting. Carrying on. But my body felt it. The consequences were real. Recovery, for me, isn’t doing everything. It’s learning when stopping is the kinder choice.
I almost didn’t write this post because I feel like I’m always the person with another problem. But cluster headaches are part of my life for months every year. Hiding them never helped me. Even during relic malfunctions and pain, life still happens - sausage rolls, book towns, and Minecraft houses full of chickens.
Absurd Universe 