NAVEL GAZING AND WHY WE NEED TO

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So here's the thing - all of this roller coaster was to get back to where we started and understand it. There were aims and goals  - to find John Brinnand, to re-establish long starved roots, to remember who I was before this sense of self destruction overtook my rational brain.


I went back to the beginning - to the love affair with my beautiful, crumbling, vibrant city, to the loves of my  youth, to when my mother was at her most witty, vibrant and enchanting. I found that most of those I loved were still my friends, that we could gossip on the chat line as if yesterday wasn't thirty years away. I found that to write gave me a voice I had lost and gave voice to others who will not or cannot speak. I had to learn that there a real world outside of this cyber space I seem to have taken up residence in.


And it has been hard - two attempts to kill myself, a new found capacity for self harm that is alarming and painful. The sense that sometimes poetry offered the only vision that made sense and that most people don't get poetry. And the unlooked for, unexpected kindness and love that had come back and forth as the pages have rattled out.


So here I am, six weeks later - 45 blogs - 1500 readers - and someone in Russia and someone in Denmark know my name and some of the secrets of my heart. I lay under the duvet this afternoon trying to make sense of this life. Reader, it was touch and go. Do I stay and fight or fade - I fight. I fight for the student who so lovingly told me she felt 'safe' in my classes for the first time in school, for the bad boys who not only made me their Facebook friend but bothered to see what I was doing and how I was - and wanted to tell me how they had changed. I am not alone, not childless - I have hundreds of children and I love them all so very much. I fight.  For the young man who learned to have fun, for the members of my tutor group who write of their extraordinary achievements. For the memory of my mother and Desmond. For Katy Joy. I fight.


I may fall back and this is a long, long road. But my fellow drama queens out there, we know the heaving bosom moment and the subtle gulp of tears as we face our next ordeal. As Scarlett would say, "tomorrow is another day". It is the journey that teaches us and we learn the lesson or perish.


So tonight this is a declaration of war on depression, anxiety, suicide and self harm. You are not going to win. I am not going down without one last battle. So bring it on. I have you dear reader as my secret weapon. You shine a bright light into the darkness and allow me to see a possible exit. Thank you. You will be relieved to know there will be an intermission of a couple of days. Get your breath back and be prepared, Again I thank you, love you and Good Night.


xxx