Go Make Some Memories

Those of you who know me, know my story, know those things that changed me, or that one particular event that knocked me so flat on my backside, I never thought I would get back up, but I did and here I am.

No truer was my motto, “pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start again.” My own personal mantra. I clung to it like the last piece of wreckage from a seaworthy vessel, until I reached what resembled dry land.

Yes occasionally the waters seem choppy and the clouds descend, but I was forever changed by Emily. I can never go back to the person I was before, nor do I want to, because I feel like she set in motion the real me. Like the person I was before her was not really me, that I was kind of hiding away from the world.

But not anymore. I feel almost like a newborn child, who is experiencing life, really feeling the sun on my face, seeing the clear blue sky for the first time and trying to take it all in and remember it. Holding tight to these new memories and feeling blessed, almost as if I am feeling and sensing everything for Emily and not just myself.

I feel like I have found me.

We spend so long scurrying around, working and trying to make everything better that we tend to miss the little things around us, especially if we always have our heads down looking at our phones. But now I look up. I look up at the world around me, I watch others making memories and smile as they paint new pictures together.

I try and spend time doing the things that give me joy, writing and spending time with family and friends wherever possible now.

Bob gave me the gift this week of a children’s book I had the idea for, for years but had never gotten around to writing it down, but yet out it came like a song. Yes I was driving to placement at the time but I remembered it, I was almost singing it to myself all the way there until I pulled into the car park and managed to hurriedly write it down. Then finally when I made it home, out came the laptop and the whole thing was written down and like magic there it was in front of my eyes. A gift and all I need to do now (she says as if its easy) is to get it published. I can see it in my mind, I can see all the pictures and the up turned faces as it is read to a group of small children, all eager to hear it and I have no doubt that one day it will be so, because I believe it, now more so than ever before.

This week I made some memories, the proof for my poetry and short story collection arrived and the grin on my face was hard to ignore, spurring me on to write some more.

I went on a road trip to see friends in Derbyshire, a county I have developed an emotional attachment to (almost as much as Devon) and saw badgers just happily eating peanuts from a bowl put out just a few inches away from my face, with only the thinnest window separating us. It was as if I was sharing in the meal, like we were old friends who had just stopped for a time. I felt like a child again watching these wild creatures so close that I could almost touch them. I’ve walked for miles across vast dales that seem never ending and looked out across fields that seem to go on forever in every direction, just reminding me how vast and magnificent it is, this not so tiny island on which I live and how small and insignificant we really are.

All this in a few short days, that disappeared in a blink of an eye, leaving me craving more.

Let’s all go out and make some memories and see where our next adventures take us, we are forever changed by our memories and this is a journey I never want to end.