It has been a long time since I wrote regularly. I have always found, in writing, the possibility of expressing myself in a truly honest way. Yet so often, when I do write, I find myself writing with a filter, bound and held back by fear of the consequences that I worry would come my way if I were to be completely open, uncensored and real about my life. As I have gotten older, the stakes feel ever higher. It feels like there is more to lose, mostly in terms of credibility in my career (if I have any) and therefore, at the most fundamental level, income and security.

As a result, I find myself both craving and resisting writing, and the resistance usually wins. As the days and months creep by, rolling into years and now, almost four decades, an overriding feeling I carry with me is disappointment. I often feel disappointed in myself and how I am using my time on earth, despite all that I have to be grateful for.

Over the last few years, I haven’t managed to find a way to overcome this ongoing push and pull. My life has changed, and I’ve gotten stuck in a rut with some unhelpful yet stickily familiar habits. I live my days wrapped in a cocoon of scrolling Instagram, playing games on my phone, vaping, moving things from one room to another in the house, feeling a low level but constant sense of overwhelm, and meeting apathy, anxiety and depression at the door over and over again, unable to prevent them from coming in.

My body is creaking as she gets older. I’m slim but unhealthy, plagued by regular headaches, knees that don’t want to run, muscles that are tight and crying out for yoga that I only very rarely gift myself. I have bouts of insomnia (including right now), and have done throughout my mid to late thirties. And a lot of the time, I find myself wondering if this is it. If this cycle of eating, cleaning, speaking, listening, doing, watching TV and constantly letting myself down is what my life is about. Sure, there are many moments of beauty in my life too. I go to gigs and restaurants and have in my partner a really solid and trustworthy man. His daughter is a gift in my life. My dog is one of my favourite things about being alive, and as she ages I think many thoughts about what it will be like to lose her. I have meaningful work, although I've felt burnt out as the year comes to an end, a lovely home, although it’s a constant stress and battle to have it feel the way I want it to feel, lovely friends I don’t see as much of as I’d like to, and so many fundamental privileges that I know I could and tell myself I should appreciate far more. But something inside me feels like it’s missing. A sense of possibility and hope and ambition and that it is worth putting in the effort to try to do something helpful or loving in the world.

Honestly, I feel like I’m coasting. Pushing and pulling in a cyclical tug of war between the part of me determined to move forwards and the part of me that wants to say fuck it and just give up and give in to the cynical, nihilistic voice and force of depression inside me. I believe I have or have had potential to be and do many different things, and I am squandering it. I am not making the most of my life. Not even just in what I do, but mostly in the way that I do it. On my phone all the time, it’s as though I am barely here some days. Just reaching for the next quick colourful, unsatisfying fix to drag myself through the hours.

As I write and re-read this, I wonder if this is what depression is. I am also massively judging myself as being selfish, dramatic and boring, judgements I have lobbed at myself on a regular basis throughout my life.

I feel disconnected from my soul, and the line from A Course in Miracles that you can’t lose your soul, only your awareness of it has become a comforting idea at best, but a truth I can’t quite touch and hold onto. It feels out of reach.

I know I need to start writing regularly again, and that there are many other changes I need to make, too. So I have an idea. I want to write myself some letters, just as I do at the end of each year using FutureMe.org (fabulous website and project by the way - definitely check it out, even if you’re reading this in the middle of March or May or September or June). And then I want to let my mind step aside and allow a deeper, more wise and loving part of me respond. Not the part that is in turmoil. As lofty as it sounds, it feels as though this format may enable me to have some sort of dialogue with my soul. Perhaps what I will discover is that, as it says in ACIM, my soul is not parched and could never be, but that there is a large part of the daily me that is desperately thirsty and that this is one way in which her thirst may be quenched.

So here I am, with all the thoughts and feelings I’m living with, writing these words at 1:35 in the morning while the rest of the building sleeps. Saying, once again, hello to creativity, and seeing if I can write my way back to a sense of aliveness. Setting off once again, to write my way home.