How time flies, indeed. Since I last typed up here in my precious blog, we’ve shifted from 2025 into 2026. Now I can technically say it’s been a year since I posted in here, although it’s really been almost 3 months. And I find a few things kinda of amazing in this first paragraph:
The first being that it’s only been one year (technically) since I typed in here, and actually 3 months. I started to put this blog together around 10 years ago and had so many high hopes for it and my life, before it all just kind of… Fell away. Into obscurity, along with my mental health and soul. So, to be posting in here as much as I did last year when I was abroad, and now to be returning to the blog right now when I’m not abroad… and to actually finally be able to say with all truthfulness and sincerity that it’s PRECIOUS to me… I find that amazing, and has hit me harder than I thought it would.
Because for a long time now, it’s been so difficult for me to be able to say anything is precious to me, let alone my writing, or telling my story. It made me so sad to sometimes come across my blog, and to see it empty apart from the only 2 posts I made 10 years ago, a time I described to someone as being “the last time I really felt alive.”
But here I sit, all this time later, looking back at something incredible and recent, and looking forwards to more; more writing, more laughter with people, more travelling.
More of finding the answer to that question, “who am I?”
It’s been incredibly hard, the last 3 months since I got back from Thailand. I do remember landing in London, and still feeling some kind of magic in my bones, as I would glide from the plane, through security and standing outside of Heathrow airport. I felt the cold tingling against my skin, watching my breath fog outwards and smiling at the sensation. When I opened the doors to my small studio flat, I looked around and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t see a prison. I thought, “wow, this is kind of cool, you’ve decorated it so nicely!”
I was so curious to see what kind of adventures I’d have in London, apply the lessons I learned in Thailand, and explore how the kind of person I had become would engage with the regular world of ‘home’ in a different way.
But within a week, it seems everything had gone wrong, and I started sinking again.
Like many positives experiences over the last 10 years, Thailand had taken off my armour, my cynicism and the despair wrapped tight around my neck. It had made me more open, hopeful, generous and free. In a place like Bangkok, full of possibility and so, so far from what broke me, it felt like I had grown my wings again, and could finally feel the breeze carrying me forwards, away from the polluted depths down below that destroyed me. Lifting me to a place where I could finally belong.
Back down there, being that kind of person isn’t safe.
Down in the hell of that cityscape, hope is a dangerous thing. Hope has you looking backwards, at the bloody stumps where your feathers used to be. Hope whispers sweet nothings that one day, you will fly again in the great expanse of a blue sky you can’t see and no longer remember. Hope assures you that if you dare to open your eyes and look up and forwards, you’ll find something worth surviving for. Hope promises so much.
And down here, where the endless fires crackle and swallow the world, where the smoke is so thick you dare not breathe, and where the shadows stalk every corner, invade every space and DEMAND. And DEMAND. And DEMAND.
Those promises no longer mean anything at all.
It would be better to break yourself completely, to blind yourself quickly, to lie down and die, before they have the chance to get you again.
Before Hope can let you down again.
After a month of finding myself in her arms again, on the precipice of understanding that I’ve just been looking in the wrong places and rediscovering my humanity again, and with it, my faith in humanity, I made the fatal error of going back down to the place and people who broke me so consistently, so constantly… Thinking that the light inside me could ward away the darkness.
Suffice to say, that didn’t fucking work, at all.
I suppose I was still drunk from the joys of not being in isolation, of being with people and wanting to have fun and smile. The beer goggles from this intoxication must be incredibly fucking strong, to lead me back to a spiritual suicide by going to the familial equivalent of Chernobyl. Within days, being around a certain family member had slowly flayed the the protective layers of my mental health (as they’ve always done), triggered me like an NRA fanatic that did too much cocaine (as they’ve always done) and was generally not the person I had hoped they’d be, or receive me as the person I was becoming again, over the person they always wanted to destroy (as they’ve always been).
After flying out so suddenly to a place I hadn’t been in 10 years, feeling a type of fear I no longer knew existed, and landing with basically nothing, knowing no-one… And a month later, coming out the other side with more happiness than my heart could bear, more amazing memories than my brain could contain, and more hope than I could hope to hold…
All it took was 2 days around my brother for it to become less than a distant memory.
For the fires to melt down all sense of safety, security and belonging in the world. For the smoke to strangle the stars out of my sky, and to cast his shadow where the light at the end of my tunnel glowed so brightly just days before.
For around 2 months afterwards, I walked around in a daze trying to understand the mental car wreck I had just been through, and how and why it had crippled me so much. I would lie in bed all night, having arguments in my mind about what had happened, having long, drawn out conversations with AI to comprehend why I was drowning in such despair and unable to find my way back to the surface.
And more so than anything, I would try to look back at how amazing my trip had been, at all the wonderful gifts it had given me. I tried to hear the laughter of all the locals, to play the tapes of my beautiful moments with them… But the world was cold and silent, now. I tried to look back at the words I had wrote… But every time I looked back, all I could see were the bloody stumps where my wings should have been.
And once again, I stopped looking back.
I said I found the first paragraph in this post amazing, because the distance between posts had gone from years to months, and that I found this vessel for my writing “precious.”
The other reason I found it amazing is because of that distance. How when I was in Thailand, I was bursting with creativity and inspiration, which found its way on these online pages. But after my sibling induced fallout, that distance became wider, and wider, and wider. I’d sit at my desk, load up this site, and again, try to look back, to see if I could find something in my past worth being alive for. Thinking that after weeks of struggling to find a reason for waking or stepping out of bed, the person I was in Thailand would give me the answers.
And I’d close the page, just like I’d block my mind from accessing the memories of where I was, how I was and who I was.
Because after being blinded by the light of the heavens and basking in the warmth of Hope, I had betrayed myself by going back down to depths to think I could share that with my executioners.
And I couldn’t betray myself by letting the person I was see where I was, now. I couldn’t betray myself by seeing how far I’d fallen. And I just couldn’t bring myself to believe in her promises again.
Until now.
The last few years have been hell for me. And every time I start a new year, I go in with the intention do something more, to become something more. Coming into being and daring to hope, to move forwards through the fog and somehow unbreak myself before ending back at the place I started: at the feet of those who broke me, so I can crawl my way back to December to think about how I can fix myself again over the next 12 months.
But this year, something feels different.
Here I sit, typing again. Despite where I am. Despite how I’ve felt. Despite looking up and seeing how high the mountain I want to climb is… Because now, I remember.
How blue the sky is.
What the sound of laughter sounds like.
What the warmth of the sun feels like on my skin.
When I remember my time in Bangkok, I remember.
That I’m not broken.
That I have a place I belong.
That Hope is always worth listening to.
Now, I remember.
Who I am.
