You’re everything that I hoped for, that’s why I gave you my all

I came to write about something exciting, but first I am going to vent about the crappy day I am currently having (the exciting bit does come, I promise).
Today began with wiggly anxious feet, which is never the way a lady wishes to arise from her slumber. With too much unsolicited adrenaline my extremities tingle and I need to release this, so feet wiggling like I’m in Footloose is my usual go-to. Checking the time on my phone I realise I still have an hour before my alarm insists I get up. So I attempt to go back to sleep but I am met with the anxious thoughts that accompany my eighties dance movie choreography. Great. Then I receive a text from my sister to inform me that Dolly (the dog) has been sick a lot in the garden. Yippee. By this point it’s clear that I am not going back to sleep. I drag myself out of bed, eyes still mostly asleep whilst I get dressed to walk the dog and face the day. As I head downstairs I am met with an odor of vomit and two huge piles of sick. One of them is a revolting tangle of green slimy grass. Oh joy. As I go towards the back of the house to let the dog in to the garden, what do I see? Oh yes, that would be another 3 piles (this time its the raw chicken from last nights dinner), slick and putrid. Excellent. Then there is more in the garden and more in the living room I discover. Poor dog, clearly shes unwell but also, gross. It’s not even half nine in the morning yet. After spending a fair while doing my best Cinderella before she meets the prince impression, I walk the dog; who spends most of her time eating more grass…
My shopping is due to be delivered between ten and twelve today, so I await its arrival and get on with a multitude of boring house chores. However, the shopping still hasn’t arrived half an hour after the time-slot has ended. Weird. After logging into my account it would appear that I didn’t finish the transaction yesterday so our shopping won’t be coming today. And I haven’t even mentioned my strange enchanted hand that keeps going a little numb every now and then. I get to climb into a dark hole and never come out again now, right?!
Okay, I get that worse things happen at sea and certainly worse things have happened in my life, but today’s morning has felt relentlessly bleak. Roll on tomorrow evening and being with the boy I am incredibly fond of in a place that helps me breathe a little easier (when I’m not feeling anxious anyway *monkey covering eyes emoji*).

Now, onto much better news. On Tuesday the seventeenth of May, this blog hit twenty thousand overall views! I am so excited about this. I never thought I would actually keep up blogging, and I certainly never thought many if any people would want to read it. But I did and you did and now I’ve hit a huge milestone for someone who has just written a whole passage about dog vomit.
Thank you to everyone who reads my blog regularly or if you are entirely new and you’re helping me on my way to thirty thousand. I appreciate every view, every comment and every share I receive. You are all lovely people and I am so pleased that anyone would want to read my work.
I thought that I would link you my Facebook page, so should you wish to keep up to date and notified when a new post is published you can do so. Or, if you are a fellow WordPress user, feel free to hit ‘Follow’.
Here are some of my favourite pieces I have published on here, in case you missed them:

• Hold your head high, heavy heart (- Dear teenagers, it gets better or at least different).
• I have the dance moves of a mustache and the singing voice that sounds like a beard on the inside of my cheeks (- for all that love those with a beard and those that have careless whiskers to tame).
• And I am finally seeing that I was the one worth leaving (- Inspired by Frank Turner and moving on from something that never quite fit).
• You hid there last time, you know we’re gonna find you (-My tale of always being the fat girl and how some builders harassed me).
• But I am a ghost, just haunting myself (- An exercise in dissipating writers block, melancholic whimsy at its best).
• I’m ready to hope, swing me out of the low; wide awake in the glow, can’t do it alone (- Sadness and hope combined in melancholia. My canary sings no more).
• And I kissed him back like and arsonist with a pocket full of matches (-romanticised romance).

Once again, thank you.

I’m ready to hope, swing me out of the low; wide awake in the glow, can’t do it alone

Like everyone, sometimes my thoughts consume me; they whoosh and whip past me, dragging me down with the inertia. It is then that I know I need to be still and quiet, to numb my mind and everything else and wait it out in the dimmest light. If I cannot still the ghosts and demons inside of my mind then the tsunami of anxiety begins to swell inside of me, giving off small adrenaline ripples before the surf of the main waves hits. At one given time I can be happy, sad, excited and numb. The monsters in my head are waging a full blown war with me, and the worst part is that I am both sides of this fight. These maleficent creatures that stroll around my thoughts whether I’m awake or dreaming are all me. Hateful and wicked, vicious and destructive – my own mind attacking itself.
It’ll be a year next month since my mother passed and the gaping hole inside of me, torn by the cataclysmic event, is just as empty eleven months later. Other parts of me have sparkled and danced and sung in the wake of losing her, but I always wonder if they would shine a little brighter still if she were here. My mum would have been the person I would have discussed and confided in about the new and exciting or scary and overwhelming moments, navigating them on my own is harder than I ever thought. My canary sings no more.
There have been some big moments in my life in the last eleven months and not having my initial port of call to tell about these things can often crush me. This new year is going to be hard. There are lots of facets that need to be attended to in my life, but by far the biggest hurdle is being genetically tested for the same cancer gene that killed both my mother and my grandma. I have so many wonderful people in my life that love me and will support me through everything and I am so grateful for this. Grief would be much harder without love. As hard as they all band together and try to patch up the chasm, there are still chinks and cracks where the darkness is still visible. And the sadness is always lurking.
February is going to be a hard month, my birthday, my dad’s birthday, my mum’s birthday combined with  the anniversary of her death. So bear with me over the next few weeks; the tone may be dark but some days I can almost taste the spring. I just need to hunker down, and push forward flanked by my forever encouraging support system.
A thank you is owed to those that help me remember my mum and how fabulous she was by enveloping me into the circle of friends she created. To the one that listens to me cry, doesn’t judge me and softly tells me awful jokes. And the others that just drop me a line with everything else going on in their lives to make sure that I’m alright.
I can almost hear my mum encouraging me with a “you can do it Duffy Moon”.