What I want to say

Something great happened today.
Something awful happened today.
Kiss me, a lot, please and make them both go away for a while,
I'm tired.
Instead, we will say: What's for dinner. How are you. Cold out? Water's hot! Fancy a tea? Goodnight, darling.

A cliche, but so what:

Today I have kept dry eyes through:

The news that my father is ill and in hospital and not doing well,

The fact that this came 8 weeks before a major international conference that I'm helping to organize,

The fact that I have a major report to write which is behind schedule and

Listening to my mother's tearful and panicked voice on the phone.

But:

The fact that it has just started raining outside, after I've spent an hour straightening my hair with every heat-styling tool known to humankind, has made me burst into loud, passionate and completely juvenile-sounding tears.

One year!

18th February, 2011.

I haven't even started recovering.

Life is a bitch with a sense of humor

Two days ago, I was screaming down the phone: "Pick yourself up, for God's sake. It is how it is, why do you cry about it all.the.time. You're sad. ALL. THE. TIME."

I have been screaming some variation of this, often, since approximately age 9.

Today, I caught a glimpse of reflection in my office window, crying. Again. Alongside all the beauty and joy, I too am sad. ALL. THE. TIME.

Some weeks (or months) it is closer to the surface. Other weeks, I am joyfully climbing the cliff I am shortly going to jump from.

And the only person who'd really understand this,

The person who has put pensiveness in my bloody cells,

Hung up on me two days ago (unsurprisingly) and hasn't rung me back.

So I texted today, and said sorry, Ma.

How many people are crying right now, thinking their life is over and their last, best hope has gone?

How many of these people will wake up tomorrow to realise they were wrong.

How many people are laughing right now, surfing a high, blissful wave,

Not seeing the rocks ahead?

How many of these people think they are alone.

Something I wonder about a lot these days:

I've lost people slowly and fast, and cried my heart out for them. I've walked away from places and felt my insides creak and slowly fracture from the pain of knowing that I am leaving, and will probably never go back. I've lived under the shadow of loss, with my father's illness, from age 6 to the present. That's long enough to know and navigate every corner of that hollow, crushing space inside of me.

But none of these things has felt as devastating as the passing of a cat I knew and loved. Sometimes I wonder, wiping tears that flow of their own accord every.time.I'm.alone - How can this feel like this?! After thinking that I knew, for so long, what grief is, I suddenly realise - this is the first time I've really felt It.

People, you 'can' cry for, and there will always be arms to hold you as you sob for a grandmother, or a boyfriend (who didn't deserve a single teardrop), or a beloved first home. Even years after the event, people will nod knowingly, and say they understand, that it might never heal, but that it will get better. A cat, with whom you spent countless hours simply giving and receiving love, using no words, you cannot mourn for with others. How to describe to someone the loss of a world only you knew, the loss of a friend no one ever saw the way you did.

It's turned cold in England again. After a long semi-autumn that stretched all the way into the middle of January, walking out of doors now feels like making your way through a fridge. As usual, people seem taken by surprise, unwilling to just accept that it's February, in the northern latitudes, and therefore is likely to be very cold.

I'm more disappointed than surprised. I was busy breaking out the spring colors that I was moving towards already. A hopeless slave to Vogue, I've fallen straight into line with their directives for spring: Peach! Apricot! Gold! Mango! I'm fascinated by how something I never considered before can suddenly seem right and fresh and exciting, not just to me, but seemingly to everyone else. Did this happen because Vogue told me what to love? Or does Vogue have its finger right on the pulse? Or is it a bit of both?

Either way, I'm enchanted.

Now it seems I'll have to wait a while before breaking out the sunrise colours I've been hoarding and keep my grey woolly hat, my grey woolly sweater and my grey winter coat all firmly on.