Skirt***: PrettyLittleThing | Trainers: Converse

It’s time for a mental health-style post. These sometimes crop up on this blog in-between the more frivolous beauty, style and travel posts. Usually when something bad happens to me and I need to get it out there in my own words; but this time, there’s nothing wrong with my life – it’s wonderful – and that in itself is the problem.

My brain never rests. It’s contstantly thinking and ruminating and predicting the worst – I guess that comes with having chronic OCD. There are lots of thoughts about life going round in my head at the moment, and basically, i’m afraid. You might remember that one of my oldest and best friends died very suddenly just before last Christmas. She had been due to get married this summer and I was supposed to be doing a reading at her wedding. It’s only recently that i’ve realised that her death has affected me and my life a lot more than I thought it had. I did the usual grieving and my life returned to normal, because life has that habit of just going on.

However, it changed my view of life forever. It cemented in my brain just how unstable life is, how none of us know anything about what is ahead of us. It scared me. I’m scared of living. After the dreadful year that was 2017 – when my precious doggy baby Vicki died, when I broke my knee and when my marriage ended (the later turned out to be a great thing), I had the naivity to think that I’d had my troubles in life now, that i’d had my annus horribilis and survived it. I felt like i’d had my share of bad luck and could now look forward to what was ahead.                                                                                     Blouse***: PrettyLittleThing

My friend’s death hammered home that anything is possible. There is no such thing as having had your fair share of heartache. There is no such things as odds. Life has no rhyme or reason, and nobody is immune to having another tragedy just around the corner. We all have heartache ahead of us, because everything and everyone has to die at some point; but the knowledge that something so upsetting will happen eventually, looms over me like a ticking time bomb. How long will I be allowed to be this happy?

I think it’s especially prevalent in my mind at the moment because i’m currently planning my wedding, and my friend never got to see hers. She was so excited and just six months away from it. Will I get to see mine? Someone who likes odds, might say that it’s unlikely both of us tragically wouldn’t get our weddings, but there really is no such thing. Another friend of my age had both her parents die from different types of cancer within a couple of years of each other. Odds played no part there. I’m not writing this post to be pessimistic or to scare people, I’m just trying to put across how fragile life is and how hard i’m finding it to accept that. Do other people struggle with this?

I’m trying to use this understanding of life positively – to appreciate the daily minutiae of life, to see that I am so very lucky to be able to go to Tesco with David today, or to do the dishes with him and make the bed. To realise that every day is a gift, no matter how I spend it, as I get to spend it having David and my parents in my life. Something could happen so suddenly that could blow my world apart, so everything should be appreciated, and nothing should be put off for tomorrow. Life really is too short to waste.

I wish that I had been taught in school, or prepared better, for the rollercoaster of peaks and terrible troughs that is life; or maybe those childhood and teenage years are supposed to be spent in blissful oblivion if you are lucky enough? Does this fear come with adulthood for everyone?

Always be kind, and never gloat at someone else’s misfortune, as you don’t know where the next bend in the road will take you. It might go up, but it might go down.

*** This is a sponsored post with PrettyLittleThing, but all opinions are my own.

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