Home

And then, without fanfare, though you have never really been away, you are home again. There is no euphoria. Just relief wrapped around your neck like an amulet. You want to dwell in it, this relief. Swim in it for a while and see how it feels. No plans. No promises.  Just space in which to tread water and grope your way back to life again.
You are Home. There are none so blind as those who will not see but now all your senses are alert. You can see the mould growing behind the cream wardrobe and the way damp is making beautiful bubbles out of your paintwork. You know that there is a draft blowing in through the back door and that the roof is letting in.  You can feel goose-pimples scatter over your skin and you can hear the drip drip drip of water finding it’s way through the slates. These then are the gifts, relief has to offer: senses that could hear a pin drop, find it in a haystack, feel it prick your skin. Know above all else, what damage it could do.

You are Home. Now at long last, you see why being home is so very necessary. How essential it is to healing a mind and body somewhat ravaged. Why you need to be writing again. Why there are some words better out than in. Why rage will not be suffocated, nor cannot be allowed to spoil all that is so very precious.

So what is essential now is time and space and oodles of your own brand of ordinary. Please to the heavens. Mornings spent sipping vanilla coffee from a glass mug. A hearth oiled back to blackness. Gregorian chants emanating from the walls. Green smoothies. A dog on the mantle-piece. An hour with a notebook and a mind harnessed so only the truth will write itself into posterity. Rose quartz crystals clutched in the palm of your hand. Audio books played in the car. Tea with friends who call in unexpectedly just because they miss you.

There are too many books on the coffee table, too much white food cluttering up the pantry and too many blankets draped not-so-cunningly over horrid stains. You are eating enough Maryland Vanilla Snapjacks to cause a national shortage, but for once you do not feel like running away. For once you feel capable of sitting in your very own midden and confronting the toxic waste of a dream gone sour. There is no escaping it: you cannot shop it away, read it away, wish it away, or even eat it away. Nor can you tidy it up, drive it the local tip or banish it with bicarb.

There is no escaping it so wisdom whispers sit with it. And this then is what you must do.

Home might just have the answer.