How life changes

I've given quite a bit of thought as to how I would return to this blog. Would the focus remain on films, specifically my one true love of horror, or would it look quite different upon my return? A part of me never even knew if I would come back here, a place that I wholeheartedly believed a year ago would kick off my career as some kind of amazing film writer. Turns out that paying sixty quid for a website domain and writing 3 articles about films that literally nobody cares about isn't all it's cracked up to be.

My life recently did an entire U-turn when the person I thought I would spend my life with ended things on a random Sunday evening. After the initial shock, tears, wailing, rocking backwards and forwards like the place I belonged best was a padded cell, I have landed here. One week on, to be exact. Sat on my sofa, in a flat that will soon only be inhabited by myself and my cat, I sit and wonder if life will ever truly play out how you hoped. Of course, I know the answer to that is no. When did anything ever happen how anybody hoped it would? I never was supposed to come to Bristol for uni, and now here I am four years later with a broken heart, a hefty rent to pay every month, but also with some of the closest friendships I could have ever dreamed of. All of which, I hasten to add, have sprung from the most unlikely of places and with the most unlikely of people.

Despite wanting to use this blog now like a diary (which I will have to refrain from doing as I am neither 17 and posting on my snapchat private story, nor 20 doing the very same having never changed) I know that it is time I use it for something better. My goal in life since I watched the film Spotlight at the age of 17 was to be a journalist. Is to be a journalist. Someone who writes for the sake of spreading information and ideas, most of which at this point will be in an unscramble-able mess, but whom carries through with her desire to uncover the truth in whatever form it may take. Dropping things before I get the chance to become good at them has been a habit of mine since I was young, from target shooting in school, to drama in sixth form, to writing in uni, I have never stuck at one thing long enough to really sink my teeth into it. That is why I am so desperate for my change in circumstances to finally give me the kick up the arse I have evidently needed to do great things and spread as most misinformation as is humanly possible.

Even though the past seven days have been agonising and paralysing, they have also allowed me to sit and be with myself for the first time in a long time. The opportunity to do what I want, where I want, when I want has suddenly arisen out of the carcass of a relationship. I have felt myself exercising gratitude I never thought I was capable of, for people that I could only ever imagine would show up for me in the ways that they have. Yet, in practice, it took less than a baited breath for them to rally around me like an injured baby bird. Knowing that these people exist within my life has been a driving force unlike anything else I have ever experienced, and have acted to propel me forwards. Even if being propelled forwards in this case simply means being able to get up and go to work in the morning. And each morning, awaking alone without the person I will love forever, taking those steps to try and feel like a person again has been excruciating. There has been no cinematic or dramatic beauty in this. Tears have not fallen perfectly while screaming in the rain, wailing 'where did it all go wrong!' before being swept up into his arms and living happily ever after. It has been ugly and fragile. Each morning is a different experience, but within that, each morning is a different experience.

A few days after it happened, I sat under the tree in a small park near my home and closed my eyes, listening to the birds. Listening to the city, and what she had to offer in that moment. The breeze tickled my neck as I sat there, and even though a future that I could have sworn was within reaching distance had been ripped away from me only days before, I felt an odd sense of calmness. I found it almost comical how, when I thought that life had just began for two people as a couple, one of them decides that their life begins now as a free agent, leaving the other in a hole that feels too deep to climb out of. How funny it was that the universe had decided to turn everything I knew, everything I loved, and the life I felt so deeply in my bones would come to fruition, entirely on its head. People had always said that the universe was cruel, but I just assumed that she'd already had her fill where I was concerned.

Being so early on in the healing process means that I have many sleepless nights to come, many days spent crying in the ridiculously entitled 'wellbeing room' at work, many evenings sat feeling anxious wondering where he might be or who he might be with. I know this all to be an objective truth, which is a dark and harrowing reality to have to face on top of an already not amazing situation. However, something that one of my bestest friends in the whole world said to me is 'there is no going backwards, only sideways or forwards', and I cannot agree with her more. Just because life throws something at you that you would much rather throw the fuck back, you can also begin to do something with the weight and the heaviness that you now bare. The sandbag that you carry with you each day will get that little bit lighter for whatever reason, and the step that feels like backwards may only merely be sideways. What a clever sausage she is.

All of this to say, I can in no way romanticise the situation that I am in. I can look at the people around me and how they may be the most amazing people I have ever met, but I refuse to romanticise something that feels so innately wrong. There is no shame in not wanting to romanticise something awful happening to you without your say-so, and when I was much younger I felt a need to control the situation by romanticising it, ultimately denying myself of one very important part of the healing process along the way: the fact that it is mine. Nobody deals with life changes in the same way, as I know that he will be experiencing this grief in a different way than I. But, at the end of the day, if you cannot find at least some happiness in the little things, then life will always remain as bleak as it feels right now.

The earth still turns, the sun still burns, and the world did not end that day. This is a way of reminding myself that I am capable of doing the same.