A series of life changing events

All it takes is one heart beat for it all to change. I have experienced my fair share of these life changing heart beat moments in my life time. 

The Corona virus was one of those moments, something so terrible my mind couldn’t fathom. For me it would mean shielding from the world, my family who I can’t live without,  giving up the things I love and took for granted.  It’s in these last months I have realised why isolation is used as a form of torture, especially for someone who doesn’t love their own company. 

I feel like 2020 owes me a refund, I had insanely high hopes for this year, it was the year I was meant to get my life back. I had to fight and crawl my way into this year. Why, you ask? Last year was another one of those life changing heart beat moments. 2019 started off rocky to say the least, I was trying to get over a hard break up that made me question my self worth.  But despite that, I was going to make the year count, I was single and ready to travel the hell out of it. I  travelled to Mexico, Czech Republic Hungary, Austria,Slovakia, Prague and Belgium. The first half of the year started off so strong, I was on track and ticking of cities and countries like I was on Speed. 

 I was on top of the world, after all I was living my best life getting over my ex. That was until I woke up in Brussels feeling ropey. But the trooper I am, I got up and dragged myself out of bed because after all, who flies to Brussels and stays in bed. I managed to just make it through the weekend and flew home to England and headed straight to bed. I spent the next day in bed with shortness of breath. It wasn’t until that evening, I was so short of breath I couldn’t complete a sentence, so I called my Mum. I mean calling your Mum, is what any grown 30 year old women would do, right?  Long story short, the next thing I knew I was being whisked off in an ambulance. Little did I know that was a heart beat moment, and over the next 6 months that were to follow, I would be hospitalised 5 times and spend weeks on end in a hospital bed, that due to the medication and my inability to exercise I would put on a stone in weight and  stop being able to fit into my clothes and lose the last bit of confidence I had in myself, but I did however develop a love for anything with elastane, my only ally on the clothing front. I couldn’t work for months and to make things worse, I was in the first year of my first ever mortgage. I had  bills to pay and had run out of sick pay, I was constantly stressed out about money. I couldn’t even make it up the stairs without feeling like I was going to pass out, I had been fit and healthy, but just like that things changed. I was so sick I started getting my affairs in order, looking into wills and preparing for the worst.

I kept thinking, I don’t want things to end this way. I started researching every type of alternative treatment I could find, I started meditating, I spent time listening and looking after my body, focusing on what I put into my body and slowly I started to get stronger.  I finally made it back to the office for all of a day and then Corona hit. Queue an emotional roller coaster from hell, where my head is at constant war with itself, talk about disaster after fucking disaster. 

All of that being said…I haven’t come this far, to only get this far!

*the image is of me mid laugh in Belgium, on the last trip I took before it all changed.