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One day the hardest thing will become the easiest, one day it will make you strong, one day the struggle will just be your strength; the one million practice rounds.. Until one day, you pause and you think no.. I won’t spiral, I won’t dig this hole deeper, I’ll look up instead of down, forwards instead of back..

I can promise you I didn’t get here on my own. I never would have. I would have stayed, capped it there. Existed.. and I can tell you that sometimes you really just get to a place where you really just get there.. exhausted and honestly, perhaps only, just grateful to be there at all.. It’s not that grateful presence.. the ‘gift’ of life that will fail you, not ever, it’s the exhausted, the exhausting, wadding through quick sand, treading water, enough is enough.. Only it isn’t.. The utter when will it be over, terrified that might be, praying that it won’t be. Making it through each day, grateful to have, again.. yet, afraid of the next, already exhausted by the monotony of it, tomorrow..

But.. You do it, because you hope, because you have to believe that there is always hope. I say I capped it, but I hoped, I did, I think secretly deep down inside I hoped that the exhausting step after step, of and through it, the ‘when it rains it’s pours’.. honestly it never felt like it would.. stop. I slipped a lot, old habits, old paths, old ways.. Until one day it all changed.. One day it felt like that rain washed me clean.. Rain, tears, black and grey.. Light to colour. and in one single moment.. It all fell away, it was a now.. A future a tomorrow, an oh my goodness kind of tomorrow, an almost couldn’t fall asleep I can’t wait to wake up, an oh my goodness I get to feel this.. tomorrow. Now. Alive.

Breathe.. You’re here.. Still. Breathe.. Feel, follow it, follow your heart, follow it home..

I don’t need to talk about it. My past. It’s precisely that. For years, and then, last year.. All of it, quicksand. I can either look at it and describe as the then to now.. The, pause.. The what I feel like I crawled out of, the how.. the how I felt afterwards, then. and every day since, honestly.. I think I crawled out of it a long time ago, but in so many ways and in every way, I never let go. I carried it with me, I felt like every moment out of it, I somehow wore it, coated and cloaked in it.. I often called it my armour, my shield.. but deep in my heart, when I felt like it beated at all, that.. What, it. It was shame. I walked inside of it, yet I never felt at home, never felt like I had arrived.. Half in half out.. Waiting.. For what.? For it to be over.. No. But in every other way, for ‘it’ to be over. And yes, there is a difference, not it all.. Never. There was always something, a little extra room in that sometimes beating heart, a little extra fight.. a little more.. louder then whisper; don’t you dare stop, don’t you dare give up.. your inner fighter. This fighter of mine; quiet.. patient. Strong, enough.. Your self worth, the part of you that loves you when you don’t, and can’t possibly think you do, or could. You do. You’re still here and it’s why your here.

My story.. my quicksand. It’s not that it doesn’t matter, or that it hasn’t shaped, hurt, destroyed, broken and perhaps, and I’ll say it, defined me. It has. It did.

But you know what.. It’s mine. but, in all of those ways.. All of those pieces it stopped mattering that I didn’t feel intact, put together. What does that even mean? I asked myself this, and in hindsight it’s so clear, it became so clear.. What if your one.. just one.. one piece? How do you bend? Where do you grow? To me.. it’s the hurt in the healing.. or maybe it’s healing in the hurt. But it’s the growth, in between and out of those pieces, it is the glue.. It is the you. You. It’s the under construction, working in progress.. an ongoing project.. And I told myself this.. You have to let it be.. Let your fighter fight for you, let you feel your worth, let you see why, let you find your own pace, your own path, whether you’re still wading, crawling out of it, half in half out.. Out.. It doesn’t entirely matter where you are.. it’s honestly that, at the end of each day, you’re there, here, now. It can’t and won’t always be where you want, but maybe that’s the point.. the journey, not the destination.. the point of arrival. For me it was the day the journey felt like home. And I didn’t expect it, I didn’t even know it could be. I don’t think I was ready.. but, that’s the point, for me anyway. In all this.. in all of that thought, those thoughts.. I didn’t.. I felt. I felt like I could breathe.. sigh. And for the very first time I wasn’t lost in the thoughts, the memories of why and when I couldn’t, or struggled to. I just did it. That’s when I knew I was out. So where am I now? What does this feel like?

You know, it changes everyday. But I am not afraid. because, I can’t look back and I won’t, because my fears; my reasons for fearing the next day, the next second.. they are past, they have.. they must and they are exactly that..past. and I can’t carry it any further, I won’t. But I need to be clear. The hurt.. I also won’t wear it, change it or let it settle into black and grey, develop it on the way to colour and let it settle, soak in anger. resent. I never could. Because how ever long it has taken and how ever much it hurt. I’m here, and it was part of it all. I mentioned earlier how it defined me.. It did, it has, but, I like to think of it in how it has strengthened me. There comes a point on any level, where you survive. and for me.. I can only be grateful.. and I would have been. Even and in every way for the ‘cap’. The plateau.. But there was still hope, still my fighter.. Still every moment out. And you know what else I am..? I say this with a smile, I’m lucky..I haven’t made it. I’m making it. And I get to. Woah! Now that’s not a breathe. Pause.. that is a breath taking, heart beating moment.. A single moment in the rest of the ‘I’m still here’ life, whether you know it or feel it, it’s the life you’ve been fighting for.. and please know that you’re worth it.. Every bit of it. Pieces, parts and glue. Growing. It’s you. The best you can be, the most you can be.

So where am I ? how do I feel? I’m home.. It feels like home.