So… I was telling someone last week that I was getting stressed trying to get a myriad of tasks completed before my holiday.

“YOU get stressed?!” came the response. Well YES as it happens, I do…

I work on managing it, I try not to take it out on other people… But yes, I DO get tense and anxious…

Yet I’m fortunate… I’m on holiday right now and have so many other things in my life to be thankful for, too…

I’m sightseeing, spending time with friends, and today I’ve been soaking in a spa. It’s freedom and bliss.

So basically, I’m blessed.

And yet…

During these days, as in other days of my life, I’m not experiencing entire, unexpurgated joy…

Yesterday I felt really ill, low and thoroughly miserable. I had a deep sense of isolation and felt desperately lonely.

I stayed indoors and span the wheels of my work life. Then I spent hours and hours working on my novel – usually my core centre of contentment, but now a chore…

I was shocked, all things considered, that I was feeling so comprehensively crap.

But then I realised that I just had to let the darkness be… To have its dominion; to air it and allow it.

You see, just lately I’ve been running on anxiety… Impelled / fuelled by duty and crisis. Though this, it’s now clear, was at a surface level. The darkness was beneath and so, it broke through, like it needed to do.

And when I recognised this, I.just.let.it. I listened to it. I was frustrated and angry. I was grieving. I felt like a failure. I went with it and wallowed in it.

Because it’s OK not to feel OK.

And eventually the darkness dissipated.

So today my adventures continue and I’m having a spa day, with afternoon tea. A set of external circumstances which I desire and enjoy…

I don’t want another day like yesterday, but because I didn’t fight the darkness then, today I have more clarity. Decisions have been made and bridges crossed.

And now a new day has dawned, I have to say that the world still isn’t perfect and nor am I – but neither are any less brilliant or beautiful for all that.