Keep on going

There seems to be no handbook for grief and I don't know how to comprehend, let alone process, everything that has happened since last November. It took several months, but I am back at work, albeit on a phased return. It still feels huge, overwhelming, and the realities of life often still feel like they are all just too much.

But you have to carry on. The dead can't come back, those things you want to say can never be said, those things you'd like to do together will never happen. But I can't stop. I can't stop living because those people are dead, in fact I have to live more than I ever did before. I feel like I have to squeeze every last opportunity out of my life. Take every chance I am given, because I don't know what will happen tomorrow.

I have this sense of a desire to challenge myself, to make myself do things that frighten me, to take the anxiety that has plagued my life and stick two fingers firmly in its face. Pete facilitated many things I had wanted to do for some time, now he is not here I have to facilitate for myself. I would rather be frightened, even terrified, when I do things than to sit here feeling trapped by a fear of something unknown, unseen and probably non-existent. It is not an irrational fear by any means, but it does not deserve to be centre stage. 

Of course I would like to meet someone new, to share with them the many adventures I still haven't had, but at the same time, I feel a fierce sense of wanting to be on my own, to prove to myself that I can do anything I want and usually I'll be OK. It's like I might want someone else to be around, but I am beginning to feel that I certainly don't need them to be. Perhaps though, this is my defence, to build a wall so high and so thick that I protect myself from even the possibility of more hurt and pain?

Stuck in a place that is geographically far from ideal, I spend my spare time planning and dreaming of the places I would rather be. I have climbed as much as I can, although I wish I could do more and I proved to myself that the purchase of a set of bike packing bags was a good idea, riding in Wales and Scotland so far. But I want to do more, I want to climb when the weather allows, I want to do a solo tour, I want to wild camp as I ride from Glasgow or Oban to Inverness. I want to catch the Sleeper to Glasgow, Fort William and Inverness and go by myself to explore - even if my anxiety makes me sleep with a knife under my pillow as I do. 

These things, so far have been my saviour. To see South Stack lighthouse in the evening sun, to visit a glen that many have never heard of, to cycle through London at 8am, to climb classic routes in Wales. These things have given an escape. Rest bite from the grief, from the thoughts that go round and round my head, from the tears that fall, from the memories that I no longer want to remember. Without these things, life would have been very dark indeed.

South Stack, Anglesey

Top pitch of One step in the Clouds, Tremadog

I don't know if spending every weekend doing something 'interesting' is the right thing to do, but it feels like it just now. I have lost so much from my life that anything that brings something approaching happiness can only be good. 

For now I wonder, will there ever be an end to this grief, will there ever be a day where I do not cry, will I ever feel true, joyous and unbounded happiness again? It is as if I wear a heavy, grey cloak of sadness and it surrounds me everyday.

But, for all I initially thought differently, you do have to keep living and you have to keep going. I just hope that one day, I will lose my cloak.    

Heading back to Llandudno by the shores of Conwy Bay