Feeling lost and uncertain whilst trying to love these things

Working on redesigning my blog/personal site into something new. Looking back over my old posts makes me sad. I got Long Covid in 2020. I only got a diagnosis in 2026, February to be exact. Comparing how much I used to go out, how much energy I had pre-2020 compared to now is what’s making me down. Life seems very much richer and substantial then compared to now. The ‘month in photos’ posts I did from those times were always out the house. I was visiting Museums, taking Mylo out. I’m only up to 2017, so I guess I can account for the fact that I didn’t have an allotment either then, as well as not having caught the Corona Virus.

My current thinking and trying, is about making space. Seeing what emerges, what encounters I might have. What grows. These ideas, along with layering are featuring in many places in my life – my plot, my writing, my artwork. These are the inspiration for the reorganisation into this site’s content to three categories, ‘growth’, ‘life‘ and ‘research’. That’s the point. I’ve been through three year’s of posts and every single one has been assigned to life. How much living am I actually doing now in comparison?

I feel frustration, impatience and doubt. I spent 3 months in a psychiatric hospital last year detained on sections two and three of the UK’s Mental Health Act. After being discharged in December, I only organised my full s117 support package just over six weeks ago. This last part is the crucial space that I have needed for so long to be able to think and try in new way. To see what emerges in the space this makes.

I am frightened, fascinated and excited.

I realise, also, after finishing the long and wending journey that I have made through the last eleven years of posts I have made that there is space growing in my life in other ways too. My son, M, who I have posted about extensively is fourteen now. He disappears regularly off on his bike to visit his mates. He has a regular Aikido practice. Most recently he has found a girlfriend, a beautifully shy and innocent soul who makes him smile. Seeing them together makes my heart sing. They remind me on the original text of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet who were both also fourteen when they fell in love.

I have more time and space in my life because another chapter is closing – that of being a parent to a young child or an adolescent. My son is a young man now and is leaving me the many hours that were spent previously caring for him for me to decide what to do with. I hope I am able to do them justice after how well spent they previously were helping him on his own journey in life. I am so very proud of him, his dad and our family. We have come so far and through so much together.