When I read back over previous posts, it seems like I’ve been thinking and writing about moving out of the waiting room for a long time now. But today I think I’ve done it. And if I had any notions that it might happen in a smooth, gliding action, they have been swiftly blown apart. Rather than serene or elegant in any way, the experience has been more like a collision – I appear to have fallen out of the space I was in and landed in a sprawling heap. I’m more like a squawking, crying newborn who has arrived in a reality that she won’t have a handle on for a long time – if ever.

In a way I”m already longing for the security of the waiting room. Problems that have been looming for a long time seem up close, and in my face. I feel a sense of panic about the things that I need to sort out in my life, the things that are going wrong or could go wrong. A few days ago I was wandering around in a kind of solitary dream, now I’m faced with so many decisions that my head is in a spin.

It’s such a short space of time, but I am feeling completely different, emotionally, mentally and physically. I feel jumpy, unable to settle on any one perspective about what’s happening. I seem to be coming up through a rapid succession of different emotions and thoughts like a diver pushing up through water.

The experience of grief is still with me, in that it continues to shape my expectations. I don’t find it easy to look constructively at the debris of my once-was life and think about creating something new. But somewhere mixed in with all the sorrow is a sense that this cycle of despair can be – has to be – interrupted. When I stay in that space I’m aware that it’s one where the dreadfulness of what’s happened doesn’t have to be ushered out, but instead has to negotiate with the faint shimmer of potential, the possibility of fashioning something new. That isn’t an easy conversation. The way I’m reacting, I think I might be just as afraid of good things happening as I am bad, more so even. Unhappiness gives the illusion of being more comfortable because it’s so familiar. But there’s also a small dose of determination, a flickering confidence in my resilience and resourcefulness to get me through. I want to see something new emerge, but I think it might take time for my eye to adjust.