The Sea Still Looks Savage, But I’m Not in It.
15052025
It’s 11:25 on a Thursday, and I’m sitting in my car, staring out at the sea. It looks murky and choppy—the kind of sea where, if you found yourself in it up to your neck, you wouldn’t last a fucking second.
I’ve just packed up my life for the second time in four months. As crap as that is, I deserve an award for managing to fit a bike and all my junk into a Mini.
We’ve just had a month of sunshine, and though it’s a change from this relentlessly warm spring, a cold wind is adding more atmosphere than I’d like to the melancholy.
The shame I’ve felt over the past few months has been crushing. Desperately chasing new friendships, then clipping their wings before they’ve had a chance to fly. A wake of destruction—at least in my head.
And then there’s that emotional situationship, which had to be brought crashing down as quickly as it gave lift. Fuck me, what a mess. It’d be nice to wake up one day and forget to hate myself.
Coming back from the waves into my body, I can feel my stomach. It’s depression. ChatGPT told me so. Those intricate interactions between the brain, nervous system and gut, I understand it now. I even know how to heal it. But it feels further away than ever.
That’s been the real issue though—the source of so much pain: my inability to let anyone in. It’s been a strange, puzzling few years. Slowly unpicking myself, trying to figure out what’s underneath. I’ve made sure that process hasn’t really involved anyone else. A few people pulled in for a moment, but no one left standing.
What else is on my mind... handing the keys back to Jade? I don’t think she’s been aware of all of this. I masked it, stupidly, which has drained more energy than I realised. She thinks this was a little jaunt. A bolt-hole to escape the winter in the suffocating English countryside. She has no idea I was trying to build a new life. And I’m not going to tell her now.
I spit out a piece of gristle from the chicken I’ve been eating and look back to the sea.
There have been glimmers of hope over the past few weeks. I’ve started a new medication and I’m hoping it helps. I’m also meeting with new therapists—so that’s something. I’m trying to remind myself that nothing is permanent, but if four years isn’t, it’s hard to imagine what a hopeful timeline even looks like.
But maybe that’s the point. Maybe this grief, this gut-heavy ache, isn’t the end, but the body’s way of making space. Clearing out what no longer fits, even if it’s painful, even if it feels like loss.
I don't have answers. I don’t even have a plan, just a car full of clutter and a quiet resolve not to disappear entirely. But there’s a strange kind of power in that.
The sea still looks savage. But I’m not in it.
Not yet.