Today I needed a distraction…partly because I hadn’t slept for the majority of the night due to a few ex-related nightmares, and partly because my synapses were baying for blood (read as: migraine riddled brain vying for an escape route through my skull). I needed something to take away that horrible feeling of dread that was swimming in my stomach, hot as lava. Anxiety was biting at the surface as each question that bubbled through the pain was a “what are we going to do?”.

I don’t want to dwell on the past, I want to completely erase it…as the past 5 years have just been eradicated with a severing of what we had, I would prefer it if I could delete all memories of it too – if I have no recollection of the relationship (of him) then my dreams will be peaceful, and I will no longer have to rely on knitting until 4am before I crash out (yes Donovan…I am still working on that damned Slytherin scarf…perhaps if you’re really nice to me I’ll make you one too!).

So yes, I was in dire need of a distraction…two co-codamols, a quick nap and a well needed cup of tea later and I was ready to attempt a chore that has been outstanding in this household since I was young (I mean really young!)….powerwashing the patio. I know, it doesn’t sound very exciting…but our garden looked like this:

(Our garden path on a good day!)

When it should look like:

(Except for the weeds, we have a forest of weeds….and ants)

Armed with a pressure washer (and a few Richard Herring podcasts) I got to work, the moment the water hit the ground I began to resemble a Dalmatian….a Dalmatian with a Hyena’s laugh. There is something quite soothing about getting drenched head to toe in mud and listening to your comedian crush whitter on about shitting against a wall…wait, that sounds rather wrong. Meh.

I was living a blissful existance until the hose pipe fell off the pressure washer and created a muddy bog where Ritz was lying on the path…Ritz, in her infinite wisdom, didn’t think to move, she just gave the water a confused look as though it had always been there and she’d only just noticed it. She did panic a bit when she dipped her nose under the water and realised she couldn’t actually breathe, but didn’t think to move her nose back above the surface…not without prompting. Honestly, lights on but no-ones home I tell thee!

Mum in the meantime had turned off the water and had started teasing my younger brother about his inability to put the hose pipe back onto the pressure washer, somehow I don’t think saying “your dad gets it deeper” was the best thing to say…though this may have been because I was still half listening to Richard Herring and everything sounds dirtier with him whispering in one of your ears. I was now covered completely in mud, Ritz was drenched wet through and my younger brother was generally being a broth head and stropping over “how deep” he could get the hose pipe.

I watched them arguing amongst themselves – it wasn’t a vicious arguement, it was actually quite comical in nature – and realised just how much I needed to be here. How much more difficult everything would have been had I decided to stay in London alone….I’m pretty sure without my family (my primary support network) chances are I wouldn’t be handling things at all, I’d just stay in bed and rot away. I’d be consumed by thoughts of the relationship, of the heartache, of how there hasn’t been any real closure, rather than attempting to start over. Instead I have these misfits that I live with dragging me out of bed everyday, forcing me to see that there is only one direction for me to move in – forward – and in doing so, never to even glance back and question what might have been.

I never expected to have such a realisation while cleaning up the garden of grime, but there you go.

Loki-Lou

PS – also, today was the first time in a couple of years that I’ve actually caught the scent of freshly cut grass! Something I didn’t experience living in London, something that I genuinely missed.