I find myself too soon facing the longest night. It feels incredulous to me that it's been a year since I shared the profound moment of epiphany about my family, such a vast thing it was for me to contemplate. To realise without question the role I've been upholding, my whole life, and to choose to release it, was nothing short of transformative. Something tightly bound to the solstice: a tipping point, a slip of the lens which changes the angle of the light and the shape of the shadows it throws up.
It was a galvanising moment which opened up space around me, the less
ons and realisations came full throttle after that pivotal point. I was becoming.
Today, a full turn of the earth later, the relief of the land under my feet is unrecognisable. A traumatising year has blown through with such a force as to erase the surface entirely. I stand here and contemplate the earth without my dad. A year of firsts: my birthday, my sister’s birthday, his birthday and father's day, culminating now, at our first Christmas without him. A time of year which historically was good for my family. My mum gets credit for all the beautifully wrapped gifts, abundant, thoughtful, all managed without much help from my dad. They’d twinkle enticingly through the mottled glass living-room doors first thing in the morning. My sister and I would sneak down as kids, to see the blurry picture of what had appeared overnight. Later in our teen years, we'd all bring our gifts down on Christmas eve, chatting about everyone's wrapping and what could be inside, before cuddling up with tea and Raymond Briggs' Father Christmas.
My dad made it special for us in his own way: being obsessed with music he made us a Christmas Turkey Tape, a compilation cassette, when we were little, which progressed onto the Christmas Cracker CD, and eventually the Songs for my Stocking USB. It was very much appreciated and the first thing we'd do before opening our gifts was to put on the new playlist to accompany our merry-making. Jethro Tull, James Taylor, Barclay James Harvest - Taylor Swift and Foo Fighters. He loved and shared it all and it's why I love music, playing it, listening to it and going to see it live.
In recent years Christmas has been tainted with my dad's surgeries, both my parents anxiety and depression, but we did our best with it. It seems since he left, I focus more on the good times. They say that happens. So here I am remembering the highlights, and wishing he could be here with us.
There has been a lot of deep work this year, I've been seeing a counsellor weekly since he died, and it's opened a necessary and overdue dialogue with myself about where I put my energy. Interrogation isn't for the faint hearted though and I'm tired, I feel fragile.
Normally, I feel full of intention this time of year, instead I feel flat, worn out and at odds. I think that's okay, though. Burnout is an old pal of mine, long before I understood what I was experiencing. These last few years have been too much, generally, and this year has been heavier than I could have ever imagined, for reasons I don't feel ready to share yet. I’m also still getting used to what being autistic and having ADHD mean for me in times of stress.
I take what grounding I can from the mulched leaves under my feet, from the pale, vast blue sky, and nose-pinking whip of the wind that's sending white horses galloping towards me.
I say ‘hi, I miss you’, once more to the waves and the water that carry his story: from embarking here on voyages that took him around the world, to returning here with mum years later to start a family and a life onshore.
The gulls cry with me, swooping over the charged surface, the curlew frees its peeling song above the distant boats. I am not religious, but it's here among the flotsam and jetsam and froth, with my fingers numb to the bone, that I feel closest to him and all that he was and still is.
And so another year closes, on another impossibly beautiful day, and I will hold him close on this longest night.
I don't know what's on the other side: light, shadow, more pain – it's unknowable. No point trying to control it, if anything, perhaps my greatest lesson this year has been to resist less. See where the current takes me if I stop trying to shape it so much. Not easy, breaking the habit of a lifetime, but I'm trying. And that's enough.
Wishing you love, light and peace wherever you are x