Jude, the rose that Rose and I bought on the day of our engagement, has bloomed. He’s so beautiful.

We’re still here. It’s been a long week. I think the downward spiral has arrested. We spent Wednesday night in the ER because Rose was suffering chest pain – almost certainly muscle strain because of her extremely painful flashbacks, but you can never be too careful with sudden chest pain so in we went and they kept us all night doing tests. She got the all clear at 7am. I slept for a couple of hours in the van out the front of the hospital while she napped in a dark corner of the ward.

We’re breaking the new, devastating patterns, with help. Rose has a new trauma therapist on board, I’ve been reading up on Focusing and holding onto my people’s belief in me as a decent person. There are still very hard hours in every day, but at no point in the past two days did I feel like I was dying. I managed a full day of college today, and started a new oil painting tonight, despite some pretty intense anxiety and stress. Art as business is not doing kind things to my head. Last night I went for a late night walk with Zoe and found the world shifted and poetry came back to me.

Dropping the ball like this means a juggling act to keep up with those responsibilities I haven’t dropped. I’ve got major preparation work to do for a stall in a week and I’m worried about it. I am still giving talks here and there – they’re stressful but also like small lifelines for me currently – feeling of use is the strongest antidote to feeling like I’m dying.

We’re limping on together. When she’s happy, she shines. I love her to bits.