On the day I found out my dad had a year to live, I was standing at work, typing away stupidly about something I can’t remember now. And in an instant, I was catapulted into a terrible grief I knew nothing about. Like a dark room I’d never entered, feeling my way around. Gemma called my boss, my colleagues, and my best friends. Ordering one to give me time off, to get coffee, and to buy moving boxes. In the apartment, I couldn’t even remember my own name. Gemma found my passport, called my sister and arranged a pick up, and booked my flight for the next morning. Early but not too early, because she said I needed sleep. How do I even begin to pack right now? Gemma told everyone what to do. She put on my favourite songs, Taylor Swift, whom she didn’t particularly care for, and made the executive decision to toss my near-empty shampoo bottles. We walked through a handful of outfits I’d need - certainly comfy ones - as Gemma proposed. And when I’d come back to collect my t...
Nineteen was, and I'm sure of this, the hardest age of my life so far. Nineteen was the age of emotion. Pure, raw, rich, bizarre, emotion. I felt so much that it was honestly overwhelming. There is no words that could properly explain the complete chaos that was my mind in this, the nineteenth year of my life. Let me take you with me on the journey that was my nineteenth lap around the sun. fall: the storm and the badlands Eighteen days after my nineteenth birthday began my journey through my mental "badlands." This was when old me was swept away by an incredible storm, one I never saw coming, one I never ever wanted to be a part of. And when the physical storm was over, I was left lying on my back, looking up at a cloudy sky, wondering where I was and who I was and why everything felt sort of...wrong. At the time, I didn't realize the detrimental effects that my time in the badlands would have on me. It was a weird time. I wasn't quite...