Nine fifteen on a Friday night and here I am, the rockstar, in bed, the cat next to me and some music by my side, music which comforts and soothes, music which heals.  This week has  been brutal, I have felt the warmth of human kindness and have experienced the cruelty of others which threatened to bring my whole inner self to a grinding halt, I hate negativity in any sense, I fight against it with all of my heart but sometimes things happen which you have no control over...

I've come to understand that this place in which I find myself now has been hurtling towards me for quite a while, what I held in my heart as being my happiest place was actually a bipolar high, all of those months of boundless energy were just my broken brain, thanks God, can't you give a girl a break?  The problem is no one noticed, I didn't notice, it's been so long since I've had anything other than small swings and times of light depression that I just thought I was the happiest I'd ever been and the associated anxiety was just that, I didn't see it being that jittery symptom of the high.

I can see all the patterns now though and here I am, on a low shelf somewhere in a well with the water rising to my ankles, I'm not up to my neck because I have friends actively trying to drop a ladder down for my rescue and I'm fighting hard to climb back up it.

I thought I had found everything I was looking for but here's the truth, the pursuit of love is so painful and yet we spend ourselves frantically searching like a lost child looking for their parents.  Some of us will search our whole lives and still never find that person, others will be lucky, they will find their soulmate, their twin flame and what I say to them is if you find it, love it, build that flame every day, feel everything with your heart, let yourself go, let yourself be loved and don't hold back, life is precious and short and every day should be spent in the sunshine with the warmth of love on your skin.

In this place where I am, please do not show me sympathy but be empathetic, be understanding and just give me a little time to pull myself back up, do not look down on me for I only write now so that others feel they can speak when they are in these places, do not cry for me for I have cried enough for everyone, in my darkest moments when I feel that the world hates me and I fear my fragile wings are about to break, I remind myself of the love I have for friends, my children and the animals I share my life with.

And, you know what, one day I'm going to have it all, I will be loved and cherished and someone will think me the centre of their universe and every day I will tell them I love them because they found me and didn't run away because I was broken, we'll just get some superglue and turn me into a slightly less broken new piece of artwork and I'll stand on platforms and tell my story, I'll tell the story of the woman with the broken wings, a woman who found the exact thing she was looking for when she wasn't even searching, I'm not going to actively look for something I can't find anymore, I'm just going to hope that it finds me instead, I'm not sure how that happens but love is nothing if it isn't magical.

It's ok to not be ok

It's the start of a brand new week and I've just come in from a photo shoot with a lovely lady who needed some new headshots, the sun shone brightly and I could feel the warmth of the glow on my skin.  Sunshine is like a drug to me, in the dark days of January, especially in the last couple of weeks when my mood slipped.  I have craved the feeling of the sunshine on my face so badly, it gives me hope when seeing the first snowdrops and the buds of the daffodils just poking their tiny new heads out of the ground that spring is around the corner, yes it's still a little too far away to touch but without a doubt, better, brighter, sunnier days are on the horizon.

Now that I'm coming out of the fog I've been in for a few days, I've come to a huge decision in my life, something which kept me from sleeping, you see, I think I am the same in real life as I am online but then it seems like I only interact with people if I am happy and bouncy and if I'm not I lie to myself so well that I believe that I am, I've come to understand that this might not be for the best and maybe I should just admit everywhere that I am not perfect (far from it) and that actually though I am stronger than I have been for a very long time I still have large periods of time when I am not ok, I have anxiety and paranoia, I have upswings where I don't sleep and downswings where I sleep like a cat and can't wake up and days where I stay in bed until noon just wondering what the hell I'm going to do to sort myself out.

The thing is that I feel like I'm doing myself a great injustice in always pretending to myself that I am happy, whimsical and magical, I am of course all of those things but I'm also vulnerable, raw, mixed up, and pretty much a mess but I have to allow myself to be like that, I went through a huge period in my life where I could only have positive moods, it's a form of control when someone says they can't handle certain moods or they use their own moods to control things so much that you are essentially always treading on eggshells frightened to show your real emotions.

I'm not sure what happens now but I know there are stories which may need to be retold, modified or even rewritten, it's the end of a chapter and the start of a new one, having emotions still scares the living hell out of me sometimes.  I think there's a fear in me that thinks if I say I'm not ok that it will be frowned upon or ignored because people in general love to read the happy, upbeat, magical tales that I tell and really, there are lots of those mixed in with the not so good things I usually just gloss over or deflect.

Oh and yes, I know that's annoying, that I only choose to hear what I want to hear, that's just kind of protection for my heart, as Harriet will tell you, I am incredibly bad at dealing with anything which isn't positive, negativity in any form has a dark and profound effect on me because I feel it as a direct criticism of my own psyche, I guess that's the paranoid inner brain which secretly believes at all times that I am not good enough.

You readers, you have stuck with me through everything, the good, the bad, the whimsy and the real, I hope that if I start to express who I am more than I have ever before that you will be with me on the bad days, the dark days, the not so ok days, maybe I'll help someone, maybe I'll save myself in the process.  I know that not all the roads I go down will be happy but I do know that I am made of strong ingredients, I know I have the capacity to cope with more now than I ever did in the past and by finally coming out and being honest with myself and everyone else including you, dearest readers, I hope you will stay with me for although some of the paths ahead are treacherous there's still no doubting that I have some very big adventures ahead too.