Last year I lost lots of people.
The first was my grandad Ernie, who was and is still my first love. After that it seemed the heavens had opened their gates and many sweet souls left us, suddenly we were less. Under shadowy skies I crawled through the year, I also developed a deep craving for joy. With every loss I needed fun, I needed to live as quickly, as chaoticly and as wildly as possible.
I attended alot of funerals, I sobbed all different types of goodbyes. I waved them all off in variety of ways and with each ending came thundering realisations. I listened to how we spoke about the deceased, what we whittled their life down too, what we remembered. Its funny, the painful, difficult, stubborn qualities that would have once annoyed us become slightly funny and endearing. They become tales we tell between sips of sweet tea and slices of sticky cake. We usually sigh and look at life with watery eyes, pondering at our own mystifying fate and thoughtful about what we'll be remembered for.
I sat down at one friends funeral and saw a photo of her when she was young. I only ever knew her in the later years of her life, so seeing her with wide glittering eyes and a dimpled cheek, smooth brown skin with a cheeky little grin gave me a little bit of a shock. It made me realise how fast life really is, that one day, if I'm lucky or unlucky depending on your life experience
...I'll be old.
I'll be dead.
And as grim as it sounds it made me want to live.
Live now.
Do the things I want to do. It sounds cliche and silly and obvious. But when you lose so many people within months and are so confronted by death it makes you realise that its all true. Death has made me closer to life, to living. Which leads me to this moment.
I'm sat cosy and slightly dreamy after a soundbath, it's a calm January evening, the wind is blustering outside and a new moon hides amongst the blackness. I have toyed with the idea of having a blog for years, but I have been riddled with self doubt and lack of confidence for most of them. I didn't like the notion of being too seen.
My controlling perfectionism came out and whenever I went to write, everything felt fruitless and dumb or worse, self indulgent! Shudder. Why would anyone read this, I'd huff and backspace frantically, until the dream was deleted and only existed in my little mind. But after last year, im finally getting a grip. Just do it. Dont care. Or fuck it as we like to say in SE London. You know all the things you tell yourself to build up the courage to do the tiniest most inconsequential thing .ha.
I know this is a bit of a grammatical messy start but its a start, and one that feels quite electric . So here it is my first ever post. How simple . All it took was an inordinate amount of grief and a ridiculous amount of courage and I've done it .
Here's to those I've lost teaching me to live and just get on with it.
After all, God loves a trier or so they say, eh!
Written on a blustering night in Jan 22.