I’m not sure what I’m about to write but I’ll try to get at the bits I can. I suspect it will end up a nonsense rhyme ... well, just a nonsense probably...

C rang me to tell me the exciting news of their engagement.
They had been in the High Weald for the weekend and he had popped the question (how strange that I have so recently been on a walk by the Popping Stone) ... that has just sent me off on an idea for sending a personalised congratulations card ...

My brain seems to be on an anxiety supercharge oscillating between impotent wild panic and paralysis and numb exhaustion. And on all levels, personal chaos, physical aching and seizing, making decisions I don’t really want to make, setting courses of action in motion, sliding inevitably down a hill whilst desperately trying to dig my heels in and scrabble my way back again but seeing the way back becoming ever more distant ... and then the grief of the feeling and the inevitable realisation...again and again... how often and for how long do you need to be slapped in the face to realise the reality? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T8XeDvKqI4E
And then, of course, the chronic grief and sadness.

And then, one decision seems to set off the avalanche...where to be, what to do, how to be, what to do for the best, where feels right, what feels safe, where is the grounding, the connection ...?

I’m standing in supermarkets thinking, don’t buy that, it’s packed in plastic, don’t get that, it’s come from deepest darkest Peru ... and what are you doing moving to somewhere even further out ... for goodness sake, are you mad ... there’s no bus, you can’t walk or cycle into town ... someone’s just told me it takes 8 years to recoup the carbon footprint of the microchip produced for an electric car, for christ’s sake ... if only fuckwit landlord could do the decent thing, but no ... maybe now’s the time to join a commune, or just sit in the middle of a field. It really is time to go, sans teeth etc. It’s just going to get a whole lot more difficult. No real reason to hang about at this point and no family to worry about any more.
Existentially untethered to anything or anyone ...
And I’m not sure how long I can keep going on the burnout front ...

[deleted text re:work]

Anyway, going back to where I started before getting on that runaway train ...

Here I am walking up the hill to tell his dad the exciting news. I know how chuffed he’ll be. Rather selfishly I am also so chuffed that he was keen to tell me, whilst still in the excitement of being on their special weekend and included in with telling his sisters, mum and stepdad.

It can be hard to know you exist in any significant sort of way. Not that it matters of course ... we are ridiculous, and it does matter, of course.