A friend posted that they could see me ‘developing an edge sharp enough to cut through this’ and carve a new beginning.

There’s been a lot of soul searching going on inside this skull over the past few weeks. But it’s all felt like a dull bladed knife trying to cut through lead.

You feel that you know yourself so well and can see your path. In a heartbeat it changes. A few cruel words that bring your world crashing down. Everything is bought into question. The smallest of routine, even the way you make tea or breathe.

The problem is all the destruction is so silent. Everything has changed for you yet the world still silently remains. It carries on without you. I’ve been walking the streets with voices muffled and blinkers on, yet inside a war rages.

All the rituals you made no longer have purpose and you carry on performing them till they are redundant and ridiculous. I caught myself hanging your washing on the line and didn’t know why… energy wasted on you. Taking two mugs out instead of one for coffee. Every word spoken has to be corrected. ‘We, I mean I.’ ‘Us, I mean me.’

Midway through crisis I saw ‘Things To Come’.

The protagonist’s life was changed in the moment her husband announced it was over, that there was someone else. A few meagre words to change an existence and send a life into crisis. More and more went wrong yet the film seemed so calm. Her life was disintegrating around her like a mirror of my own existence. Love, death, job all at once. Her existence questioned.

We (not the relationship we but the friendship one) waited for the revenge, the meltdown, the affair to match the inner turmoil. But it never came. She got a cat, smoked a joint, cried alone. Were we cheated because of the lack of drama? I felt it at the time because I wanted the catharsis of watching someone else meltdown then make it again. Slowly I’ve realised that there is no instant fix but we quietly feel the pain in order to change.

Inside all this quiet death of a life is a sea of turmoil.  But that’s just it, it’s on the inside and the world keeps on silently turning around us. We have moments of anger in which spiteful words are thrown to try to provoke the world into anger with us. We have reckless moments to feel alive to match the pain in our chests but the world still remains waiting calmly for us. Standing in the field watching the season change and the ghosts of my self harm race by I finally stopped and listened. The world was changing once again, partly dying and going to sleep before being reborn. I would stand and see the ghosts of others before me and those yet to be.

During this time we have the chance to be anything we want to be. We are stripped bare and our inner selves exposed. I’ve cried and stamped my feet, tried to dull the pain, let the blackness from the hurt slip from my tongue. I’ve tried to move this process on without stopping to breathe.

All this has quietly been sharpening my edge. Discovering a self that’s always been here and can thrive. The problem with a sharpened blade is the danger of using it. I need to find and practice new routines. For the first time they are for me.

So I’ve decided to keep it simple. To slowly take little steps one by one. In crisis I did a personality test and found out what I already knew:

To play with the first I’m trying to capture beauty however big or small.

Today we walked on the hills above Barcelona. The view was immense but my favourite thing was this tiny window with its beautiful succulents. Almost overshadowed by the might of the city, someone had taken the time to make it so pretty. My images when I play this game will be captured with the #seekingbeauty