Mother's Day Without Mum

Today is the seventh mother’s day I’ll be spending without my mum. For me, it’s arguably the worst day of the year. Days like the anniversary and her birthday are difficult but they’re private. Nobody outside of my family takes notice or even knows. I can usually be a bit sad, grieve in private, and get on with my day.

Mother’s Day on the other hand is a massive kick in the gut. And it’s not like it’s just one day either. As soon as Valentine’s Day ends, shops change overnight to their mother’s day stock. Every year I am caught off guard, and there have been several years I’ve come home crying because it’s everywhere. A constant reminder of what I don’t have. ‘Treat your mum this mother’s day!’ about 10 different shops have in their window within 100 metres. Except I can’t.

Some years I struggle fairly overtly. I’ll cry a lot, I’ll actively avoid any and all conversations about the topic. I’ll pretend it doesn’t happen and stay off social media a lot around the day, because seeing everyone’s Instagram and Facebook posts is just too damn hard. This year hasn’t been so bad – I think it’s partly because I no longer have to go through a shopping centre every day and so I just haven’t had the opportunity to be bombarded as much. Living in halls at University, I don’t have a TV and so I don’t have to watch advert after advert going on about it. But it’s affected me nonetheless.

I was doing fairly well with my anxiety, it had been months since I’d had a major panic attack. And then about three weeks ago I had a terrifying panic attack, and since I’ve been far more anxious than I normally am. Last week I was sick, which was partially due to the stress of imminent deadlines and living in a building with 60 other people, but I also think it was partially due to being stressed about Mother’s Day.

I know I’m very lucky to still have many maternal figures in my life. My stepmum is great most of the time – she’s friendly and looks out for me without trying to be my mum. And I still have both of my grandmothers, although my relationship with my maternal grandmother has always been slightly stilted.

I’m not sure how this Mother’s Day will be for me. I was luckily able to visit Mum’s grave on Friday and lay some flowers there with my brother and dad which made me feel a lot better, getting to spend a little time with her in my own way. The main thing I’ve learned to try and do is just let myself feel my emotions and not bury them – that’s not helpful at all. And maybe staying off Facebook and Instagram for the sake of my mental health.

Mother’s Day is always tricky, but I’m hoping that it will be okay. And I hope that whether your mum is still with you or not that you have a lovely day wherever you are.

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It's okay to cry.

I’ve been thinking a lot about grief lately, in particular dealing with grief at a young age like I’ve had to do. It’s messy and tricky and there’s no manual to it. Adults a lot older than you will tell you that they know what you’re going through because they’ve also lost someone recently – but they’re a lot older, wiser and more experienced than you and it’s not the same.

There was a particular phrase people used to say to me a lot shortly after my mother’s death, one that I loved hearing at the time but now I hate. People frequently would say to me ‘You’re so strong!’ Because I didn’t cry, because I went to school and did my work, because I got on with my life immediately after with a smile on my face. And because people kept praising me for this, I felt like I was coping well. That this ‘strength’ of not crying and feeling my emotions that were lying underneath was a good thing, and that if I ever did cry or feel upset I was weak.

I know now this is so wrong.

For so long I withheld my emotions because I thought that way I was ‘strong’ and that was good. People seemed so impressed by my positivity and lack of emotions that I suppressed anything I felt. And because of this, I didn’t grieve. Instead of feeling my emotions and dealing with the death of my mother, I pretended it didn’t happen. Part of this was because I wasn’t emotionally mature enough to even comprehend my mother’s death, but the way in which people reacted to my behaviour also inadvertently encouraged this behaviour. Nobody sat me down and told me it was okay to cry, that I needed to deal with my grief and try and process it. At one point I do remember trying therapy, aged 17, because everything was beginning to feel overwhelming and there were some days I couldn’t even leave my house and go to school.

But I couldn’t talk. Every time I tried to talk about how I felt, the words wouldn’t come out and I would just cry. After one session I decided therapy wasn’t right for me at that point and I went back to burying all of my grief.

Looking back, I can acknowledge that there were a number of reasons why I didn’t deal with my grief at the time. At 15, I just wasn’t emotionally mature or ready to deal with something as monumental as the loss of my mother. I also wasn’t a very emotional person anyway, as I barely cried at anything. I also understand that everyone grieves and reacts differently. But there were little things that people said to me that contributed to my denial as well.

I’m not blaming anyone in particular, and I know it’s hard to figure out what to say to someone who’s experiencing a great loss. But sometimes being ‘strong’ isn’t the right answer. Crying and feeling your emotions is healthy. It doesn’t make you weak, and don’t let anyone ever make you think it does. Grieving is a long process, and a hard one at that. Whether it’s the death of a family member or the loss of a close relationship in your life, please remember it’s okay to cry. Let yourself feel things. It will get easier, eventually.

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Remaining Positive in the Face of [Chronic] Illness

Once the battle of being diagnosed with an illness, be it chronic or not, has passed – with elation, fear, and exhaustion – it is not long before the next battle comes.

For me this was “finding my feet”. I spent six weeks or so in hospital over the space of four months, as we sorted out my medications and relieving my symptoms. Once I was on an upward path, everyone began to tell me this little nugget of wisdom:

“You've got to find the positive strength to get through this”

Hear it a few times, you take it on board and try your best to be positive. All of the time. But you forget you are fighting your own body, draining yourself of important and fundamental energy that healthy people just don't need to do or even contemplate doing. And on top of that, you feel somewhat hard pressed to be positive. Even when things go wrong. When your meds start to make you feel worse, you try and ride it out and hope it gets better; you don't want anyone to think you're not being positive about this terrible illness you have.

I tried about five medications in those early days without success. In this period, I hid away from people, quite easy when you're stuck in hospital. On those multiple admissions, my doctors tried hard to figure out what was now causing me a problem, a pain, a side effect; just why I wasn't getting any better. Then I received funding for a biological drug called Humira and it seemed to change everything. Once I could do my own injections at home, I had my disease staged with a MRI scan and I went back to work. This is when the big ‘push’ of practically everyone I saw telling me “how brave I was” and how it was “important I just tried to be happy and remain positive” throughout all my “bad spells”.

I didn't have bad spells.
I didn’t feel particularly brave.
I wasn't happy AT ALL.

This was the start of 2012. I was trying to find out who I was in a time where everyone wanted me to be happy that I was alive and well.
My bad spells were masked by my medication. It helped me a great deal but it didn't fix me. It certainly would never cure me and I still felt awful a great deal of the time.
My bravery? I was utterly heartbroken as I mourned my old, wonderful, normal life that was now just an endless barrage of tests, managing my diet and tracking symptoms. Being in hospital for so long, being so unwell, made me paranoid about when I actually did feel well – Me? Well? Something must be wrong! Ensue panic!

I just wasn't happy at all. I struggled to find my own new identity in being sick. I couldn't deny what I had or the simple fact that I had it, so I sat and thought long and hard about what I wanted to do. What I wanted to be, who I wanted to be. I read books, articles, spoke to other patients, confessed a lot to my counsellor and slowly I came around. But I struggled a great deal – and to a certain extent, still do – with being told to “be happy”. I don't think it's necessarily that simple, nor is it that easy to do. And why can't you have some time to be angry about things, about this type of thing?

It is not easy to be happy all the time. It is incredibly hard and draining to be positive all the time. I appreciate good advice but not when it is being constantly rammed down our throats; from doctors, medical staff, loved ones, it’s all said with that compassion that leaves you feeling grateful, although through gritted teeth. I don't feel as if I can be unhappy about my health. Especially now in my current situation; going through two major surgeries in four months, coming out with an ileostomy and a forever changed digestive system. Let alone how my scars and my actual ostomy makes me feel and look. I can't always be smiling about it. I need to be angry, some times.

So, remaining positive; harder than it seems. More complex than first meets the eye. Not always for the best.
Please, let us be negative and grieve for a while.
Chronically ill people are the strongest and most resilient people I know. I'm sure that's not just down to being positive, they get angry too.
Let us. We always come back to being happy and finding the funny side. Especially when it comes to bowels!

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A Gap Year in Review: Change is Good.

I’ve been sitting in my new (and temporary) bedroom all day thinking how to put a post together talking about my time out of education. How do I summarise 20 months of working and travelling and adventures into one post? I can’t, realistically. So we’ll just talk about something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

My time out of education has taught me a lot and changed me as a person without a doubt. My stepmum even today commented on how different I was to the girl I was 2 years ago, about to go to University thinking it would be the best years of my life and would make everything better.

Well. It didn’t exactly go like that.

One Term. That’s how long I managed before all of the mental health crap I had been burying and burying throughout my GCSEs and A Levels came bubbling to the surface. It started off with bouts of sadness and self-hatred amongst other things. As I was leaving University, the crippling anxiety started that took over my life for six months. I was seeing a therapist for my grief at the time but we ended up mostly talking about my panic attacks.

And then I went to America. Three whole months of sun, summer and camping. Sounds great right? Well it was those things. But there were also tears, work reports, fighting and a lot of soul searching. My time at Camp was something I am eternally grateful for because it was what I needed, but it wasn’t all fun and games. And it was only after camp that I realised what it was that had been bothering me for so long.

I was completely stuck in the past. Long story short, and I’m sure I will make a more in depth post about this at some point, my mum died of cancer when I was 15 years old. She was my best friend. And I wanted to make her proud, even if she wasn’t here anymore to physically witness it. I wanted to be the girl I was when she was alive; bubbly, outgoing, lots of friends and very active. Since she passed away I had become more introverted and started staying in more talking to my friends online than going out on hikes and horse riding and all sorts.

I went to camp with all these expectations of making her proud, being a specialist counsellor who knew her stuff. It became apparent very quickly that after 4 years of barely being around horses, my knowledge was lacklustre and not up to scratch. They were pretty okay about it to be honest, offering me to change positions and when I look back on it I was rather rude. And it was because I felt like a failure, like I’d let her down and couldn’t be the person I was.

I know now that people grow. We change and develop and it’s just a part of life. Growing away from old friends, old hobbies and haunts is natural and perfectly okay. Yes there are things I miss about my old self and life, but things now aren’t so bad. I’m definitely not as ignorant as I once was, I’m far more confident and happy to spend time with myself too, and I’m also part of an awesome bookish community. I’m far more laid back than I was at the start of my time off (probably because I haven’t had a ridiculous essay deadline in 20 months!) and I like to think I’m a lot less judgemental of people than I was. Personal growth isn’t always something I’ve been able to deal with very well, constantly nostalgic for the past and my life before my mum died. But I know now that change is good, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time, and I’m proud of who I am today.

The next time I write a post on here, I’ll be in a dorm room in a small city in the middle of the country I’ve visited approximately once. I know now that University isn’t going to be the best thing ever, that all those wild expectations I used to have won’t necessarily come true. But it’s a new chapter and I’m excited to see where it takes me.

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Guest Post: Empty Chairs by Amber Bensted

There's no right way to start this post. My story won't resonate with everyone, my experiences won't fit into other peoples ideas and the things I went through won't be the same as the stories you've heard before. Because that's the thing about grief, there's no cookie cutter process. . .

Imagine your average 18 year old girl. Working in a job she hates because she didn't want to deal with school anymore, living at home with her parents and spending her weekends doing normal 18 year old things (drinking, hanging out with her boyfriend, you know the deal). I was pretty sure I had life sorted. Sure my job was kind of rubbish but it paid enough for me to enjoy my plentiful free time and in short everything seemed to be going great. Then it changed.

No one tells you the extent to which your world will change when you lose someone close to you. So when my Dad, my superhero vanished from my life there was nothing that could prepare me for it all.

When someone dies it doesn't feel real for a while. I remember coming home from the hospital, I wasn't crying or screaming I was just walking. Putting one foot in front of the other with my family behind me, minus one person. To the people walking past me I probably looked like any other girl. Your brain doesn't always remember that you've lost someone. I would slip up, start to call out goodmorning to him before I remembered he wasn't going to reply. I would instinctively turn the radio to his favourite station then be confused as to why it made me cry. Things that were normal before turned bitter and it always took me a moment to figure out why.

You don't cry everyday. I always thought that if I lost someone I wouldn't be able to stop crying. In the films, it's all dramatic tears as you stare longingly out of windows but in reality grieving isn't necessarily tears, for me it was just an emptiness. It was an empty chair, a strangely quiet room and an inbox of unread text messages. It was thinking "I can't wait to tell Dad about this" then realising he wasn't there to tell. It wasn't a flood of tears it was a drout of all emotion.

One of the hardest things for me was hearing people say it'll be ok. Being told that it would make me stronger made me want to scream! I didn't want to get on with life, someone had hit pause in my world and I wasn't ready for it to start again.

The truth is yes the pain does fade and eventually you learn to keep going without the person you lost. One day you stop saying goodnight to an empty chair and as terrible as it sounds you might even go days without thinking about them. But it will still hurt sometimes, there will be days where it hits you like a wave and it's like you lost them yesterday. That's ok. It hits everyone differently; Dad died 2 years ago and there are still days where all I want to do is crawl into a hole and stay there or scream until my lungs run out of air. But there are days where I smile and laugh like any other 20 year old.

If there's one thing I've learned it's that you don't stop missing someone. There's no magic solution or time limit when it comes to grief. But as hard as it was to believe in the beginning it does get better. You'll learn to re-evaluate things, to prioritise your life in a way you couldn't before. You'll begin to accept the things that have changed and in a way create something good. It might not be what you imagined but it's life and that's pretty damn impressive.

If you've ever lost somebody, I hope you're ok. But remember if you're struggling it's never too late to reach out for help. Speak to those around you, if you think you need it go and see a counsellor. You don't need to go through this alone.

Amber x

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Guest Post: Suddenly a Grown Up by Sophie Waters

Within four months of graduating from university I had a job I hated, a house (plus the accompanying stress of rent and bills), a teenager and a cat after the loss of my mum. I went from being the happiest that I can remember while I was at uni to the usual freshly graduated stress to the most adult you can be, all at once, and at 21.


Now I’m a few months off of 24 and my mum has been gone for nearly two and a half years. I have a flat and a 19 year old and a cat – and they’re all my responsibility.

When mum passed away, everything sat on my shoulders. I organised, prepared for and paid for the funeral; I closed her accounts; switched everything into my name; took responsibility for Amy and Lily (sister and cat, respectively); and trudged on, trying to hold our lives together without letting myself grieve or acclimatise to the things that I lost.

Because, boy, did I lose. And I don’t just mean my mum. I lost my plans to move closer to London with my best friend, my freedom, financial freedom, ability to try for the career I want and being guilt-free when I do something for myself. It didn’t take long before I was in a really, really bad place. I was unhappy, lonely, comfort eating to a ridiculous degree (an ongoing battle in my life!) and I felt trapped and stuck. It was bleeding into every aspect of my days. I pushed people away, desperate to convince them that I was fine, that I could handle everything I had taken on. I couldn’t. There were people in my life that stepped back and left me to deal with everything when I needed that support, but there were also others that I couldn’t get rid of – neither was what I needed, but did I say so? Of course not.

But everything seemed to come down to my job. That was where is spent 9 hours a day, the thing that ruled my life and stopped me from being able to do the things I needed to do. So I left. It changed everything for me.

I went on holiday several times, spent time with my sister and my friends, went to book events and became a part of the UKYA community again. When I think of the possibility of not taking that terrifying step I shudder. I don’t know what would have happened, but it probably would have ended with me in hospital. I needed that time to settle myself again. To re-learn how to be a big sister (and a sort of mum, I guess). I needed to come to terms with what I'd lost, but also with the things I've gained. I have no doubts about who and what I want in my life now.

This horrible time of my life has taught me a few things: 
- You need time for yourself.
- Take the signals your mind and body are giving you seriously.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
- Life is unbelievably short – go tell your mum you love her. I didn’t say it enough and you never know when you won't be able to anymore.
- There will be several days each year that even getting out of bed is unbearable: Mother’s day, her birthday, and the anniversary. Doing something you love on those days helps more than I could have imagined.

 For more from Sophie follow her 

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Grief in all its Sh*tty Splendour

By the time you are reading this post I will have been to my Grandpa’s funeral. I wasn’t sure how it would go but based off how I’ve felt since he died on the 13^th of February I thought I might get through it without turning into the sodden mess I was at my Uncle’s funeral in December. Oh yeah, this *is* my second funeral for a close relative in about two months, I’m more than ready to be done with death at this point. Like seriously, fuck off death.

You might be wondering where the hell I’m going with this after that opening – basically grief is a weird mess of feelings that after three family deaths in the last 5 years I still don’t fucking understand. Every time I’ve lost someone, I’ve felt so differently to the point that I don’t even know how I might react in the future. Not that I want to contemplate that right now. Not even a little bit.

Back in 2011 my Granddad died suddenly and I’ll be honest it fucking floored me. Hell it still bothers me from time to time and it’s nearly five years since it happened. At the time I took a rather odd method to dealing with things – I wrote a blog post about it (here) and since then I’ve had a dangerously morbid sense of humour when it comes to talking about the subject of death. By making awful and borderline inappropriate jokes I stave off the constant crying that might otherwise occur, while possibly at the same time making people think I’m slightly unhinged.

I was so angry and devastated for months after my Grandad died, it was such a sudden occurrence that we were all left reeling at the void that had opened up beneath us. Just processing that he wasn’t there anymore was impossible. I had the distinctly dubious luck to be present at the hospital when he passed along with the rest of my family so now I have a ghoulishly detailed memory of that god-awful Thursday night to haunt me for likely the next twenty years.

This is the version of my Grandad I want to remember. :D

With hindsight comes a few consolations. While I may rail bitterly against the knowledge that my Grandad never got to meet my boyfriend Mark (known to Twitter as Le Boyf), or that I’ll never be able to hear him sing at my wedding one day (goddamn just thinking about this makes me choke up), I have to remember that not long before he died my Grandad was diagnosed as being in the early stages of dementia. If he hadn’t gone when he did, he could have slid away from us bit by bit until he was less than a shadow of the vibrant man we loved. I now understand all too well that it was a very back-handed blessing that my family was spared that awful experience. At least that time.

My Uncle’s death in December was grossly unfair and heart-breaking, but it wasn’t a surprise – he had had a massive stroke in April 2014 and by some fucking miracle survived. Only for us to learn several weeks later that the blood clot had been caused by several brain tumours and that he likely only had 4-6 months left. Which obviously was a thorough kick in the spine once we were already on the floor. He was only in his mid-50’s and had already battled melanoma twice before, surely he’d had far more than his fair share?

The only two positive things that came from my Uncle’s diagnosis was that although he couldn’t really speak or use his right side due to the stroke, he was still unmistakeably the same man in his mind. The other positive thing was that the 4-6 months prognosis ended up being 18 months which I will never stop being grateful for. I’ll be honest now, the women in my family are more than a little high-strung and opinionated so it seems to be the trend that we gravitate towards very chill and easy-going guys who don’t mind living with our nonsense. My Uncle Peter was quite possibly the most laid-back person I’ve ever known and had a fantastically wicked sense of humour that he kept the entire time he was battling the cancer.

The last time I saw Peter was at a joint birthday party for me and my Grandma last October (we’ve always had joint parties since our birthdays are on the 7^th & 11^th). I didn’t see him again because his health started to deteriorate later that month and continued to worsen through November so both me and my sister were told that it was best if we didn’t see him like that. I do not regret that decision in the slightest.

The birthday party was held at my sister’s flat in Nottingham so from my house takes a 15 minute drive and a 30 minute tram journey to get there. When Mark & I walked onto the street where her building is, we were met with an odd sight. My cousin Jamie, my Aunt and my Uncle Arnold were cleaning the roof of my Aunt’s car in one of the parking spaces.

It turns out that as my Aunt was driving round Nottingham’s god-awful ring road she had to get round two cyclists who were hogging most of a lane. As they passed, my Uncle Pete thought it would be *hilarious* to stick two fingers up at the cyclists, using the one hand that still worked. Apparently the blokes weren’t too impressed by my Troll Uncle’s antics and when they were stopped next to the car at some traffic lights soon after, took it upon themselves to throw a carton of milkshake onto the roof, resulting in the mess that I saw them cleaning up.

My Aunt was beside herself and threatened to put mittens on Pete if he dared do it again. Pete being Pete, spent pretty much the entire afternoon flipping the V at us all every chance he got, grinning like a fiend as we howled with laughter. There is a picture from that afternoon which I will cherish forever because it so perfectly epitomises who my Uncle was and I’m so glad that it’s the last memory I have of him.

Auntie Michele & Uncle Pete

Losing him was such a heavy blow but at the same time, we knew he was no longer suffering and it would be callous to wish for him to still be here if it meant he was in prolonged agony. He could have died straight out from the stroke and we would have been left shell-shocked and bereft like we were after Grandad died. But we were astonishingly lucky to have been given the gift of 18 more months with him when we thought we had only a handful.

We had the time to say goodbye on our terms, time to fortify our hearts against the wave of grief that was looming on the horizon, to brace ourselves to weather the storm. We could hold onto each other until the surge subsided and then pick our way back to the shores of normality. I’m not sure if we’re in the clear yet. But one day we will be.

For my side of the family though the waves swept us out again in February. My Grandpa (I will always love how everybody seems to have different epithets for their maternal & paternal grandparents) died suddenly on the 13^th February but on this occasion I did not cry. In fact I only actually cried on Monday at the funeral right at the end when the final song started to play – Josh Groban has a lot to answer for. Before you really start to question my sanity I need to explain why this third death has affected me so differently.

My Grandpa had been ill for a long time. He was diagnosed with Vascular Dementia about a year or so after my Grandad died. I honestly believe that the shock of his death probably hastened the onset of my Grandpa’s illness. I don’t know how usual it is for both sets of grandparents to be friendly like mine were/are - for as long as I can remember my Gran & Grandad have got on really well with my Nan & Grandpa. We had them all at my parent’s house every Christmas and we even took them on holiday to Florida with us twice.

Grandpa Charles & Grandad Don (L+R) at Epcot

But over the last few years dementia slowly robbed my Grandpa of everything that made him who he was. I think it was sometime in 2012 or 2013 that I went to my Nan’s house for the first time in several weeks or maybe a couple of months and was so struck by how different he was even then that I started to cry. He was starting to hunch over and shuffle his feet as he moved and my Nan had to guide him back to the sofa.

That was the top of a long slope which Grandpa kept sliding down, becoming less and less able to function, more and more dependent on my Nan until she was unable to leave him alone for more than a few minutes without him getting agitated. For the last 9 months or so my Nan has effectively been house-bound caring for him up until the start of December when he finally had to be moved to a hospital as she was no longer able to look after him at home.

Like with my Uncle I hadn't seen my Grandpa in several months as my parents felt it would only upset me and my sister to see him how he was - unable to really move by himself and so far gone with Dementia and Alzheimer's (that little shit of an illness rocked up to the party eventually) that often he didn't recognise my Nan or my Dad and would be shouting and swearing at them. I didn't argue with my Mother about this, it was awful enough seeing him sitting vacantly on the sofa, barely aware of what was going on around him let alone seeing a complete stranger effing and blinding at his family.

I think that's a lot of why I'm not all that sad now. To my mind my Grandpa has been dead for a couple of years already - at least the essence of him has been gone for that long. The dementia was like a vicious sprite frolicking through his brain, gleefully shredding everything that made him the person I recognised as my Grandpa. All that we saw each day was the hollowed out shell left behind.

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't wished he'd died sooner. Seeing the increasing strain and distress that his worsening condition caused for my parents and my Nan, made me wish that he would just slip away that last little bit during the night so the awful drawn-out trauma could finally be over. Every day that he continued in that shade of an existence was another day of good memories that were stripped from the time Before. It's hard to remember now how he was before 2011 because the fucking Dementia has seared it all away, leaving me with only the memories of the man who was no longer my Grandpa.

That Saturday when we got the phone call from my Nan to say that he had died, I felt a numbness that shocked me as well as an even more disturbing sense of relief. Finally. The suffering was over for him at long fucking last and the rest of us could stop holding our breath. 

At the funeral there were so many people that some had to stand at either sides of the room. That was wonderful to see. My Grandpa was a very popular and well-liked man and I envy all those old friends and work colleagues their happy, untainted memories of him. I actually read a poem at the beginning of the service. When I agreed to do it my Mother was impressed but for me I didn't anticipate that I would be too upset to manage it. After the service everyone kept congratulating me on how well I had done with the reading and I honestly felt like a bit of a fraud for *not* having been more upset about it.

I don't think many people would quite get what I meant if I said that I wasn't sad because I'd already mourned the loss of my Grandpa over the months that he vanished before our eyes, so I kept nodding and thanking all the people I didn't know as they told me how brave I was. Brave is the last word I would have used for me on Monday.

The point that I think I'm trying to make is that Grief and Death are such intangible lethifold-esque beasts that you can never guess whether they'll sneak up on you and devour you whole, or whether they'll rip apart those you love and leave you standing in the remnants, too shell-shocked to feel anything. You never know what you'll feel until the feelings hit.

I hope this may have meant something to some of you, and that you found a nugget of happiness from the few happy moments I've shared. It's been incredibly hard to lay out all these thoughts so I do hope they make sense. 

Thank you so much for reading. 

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