The battle tonight, every night, is that I lost someone, someone who got me through being a depressed teenager, someone who was a part of that in a positive way, but that is when he was a part of my life.

So dragging myself through the memories of him, also drags me through the memories of who I was. Though that is more emotive than rational. I feel who I was.

Listen now:

You are not the child who lives in fear of the morning, tomorrow you do not have to walk to the bus stop and have abuse yelled at you, you do not have to get on the bus and face the glances thrown at you by the girl who'll be punching you in the face on Thursday, there will be no one punching you in the face on Thursday, there will be no one to graffiti your work, there will be no one to steal your things as soon as you put them down on a desk, there will be no one hitting you over the head on Friday morning, there will be no one screaming you down, you do not have to fight to get your jacket back, because no one is going to steal your jacket, you do not have to run away from the places you want to be because there won't be people there treating you like you don't deserve to exist, there will be no one throwing rubbish at you on the bus, there will be no one throwing stones at you as you walk home from school, or leave the house to clear your head. There will be no one to bring you down and make you feel ashamed of existing.

You have a right to live, you have a right to life, you've endured this much.

You are allowed to live! Its hard to know that when again and again they told you you weren't, but they were wrong, and they are not here.

Adam

Rarely have I found the words to say what I need, what I want, where I am.

So time for some straight talking.

Adam, I love you. Adam, I love you. If I could hold you in my arms tonight and never let go I would. You who shared life with me in a way that no one else did then. Ashes is all that remain, ashes, memories and tears.

You never knew, what I did, what I'd done. I fought to keep you alive and you never knew. I saw you, I saw your life falling, I could see the danger and I contrived to keep you away from the fools in my class who were dealing drugs. I saw the sadness you held from losing your best friends and I couldn't stand for it. I stood up to them and got them talking to you again, that night at the Suffolk Punch as I drank JD.

How was it that I was the only one still talking to you? How was it that I was the only one seeing you? Why did you come and sit with me all that time? Why did you stand with me as I waited for my buses? Was I just Harriet's little sister? No, I don't think it was that, or at least it wasn't just that.

You chose to spend that time with me, talking, I barely remember that life, I hardly remember what we talked of. I know I read you every poem. What did you see in me? What did you think of me?

As you treated me with more respect than anyone. You threw away your fags as you saw me coming because you knew I wouldn't hug you if you were smoking because of my asthma. Such a small gesture, but something no one else has ever done.

You'd be by the tree, I remember, I remembered this summer, six months ago I tried to walk across that space and broke down because I knew you wouldn't be standing there again. I used to walk that way just incase you were there to say hello to. Like you used to walk past my table in Starbucks just to see if I was there.

What did we have? What was it? A friendship made of random meetings. Where did you go? Your number was the first number on my phone, when you had a phone. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.

I just want to looking into your eyes and said "I love you" because the school girl crush disappeared into a friendship and a respect that could only be called love, and I loved you, so deeply that I'm too scared to let go, I'm too scared to say goodbye.

You who took me as I was, who never minded what I looked like or what I wore, as you would throw your arms around me and I would drink deep of the smell that was your leather jacket impregnated with aftershave and cigarette smoke, that smell that was you. Burying my face in that jacket, your chin brushing against my forehead.

I want that moment again, I want you again. Now I've passed the age you were when you died, I can't believe that. It's almost three years and my heart still breaks because I just want the chance to say that I love you and to brush my lips against your cheek again.

I want you to know that I loved you because it was not a love that required a response, it was not a love that needed you to love me, it was offered freely, with no request or intention. I just wish that you'd known, maybe you did.

It's in the moments when the darkness is clouding in that God sends those people who will just sit with you. It's in these moments that Christ shines. When a friend goes beyond the call of a friend, because in Christ we are family. When the fears and the pain wheal and cloud, when you're clinging to the moments when God has spoken to you clearly because even though you know you are walking alone, you feel that you are alone. Suddenly, yet slowly, like a whisper of the Spirit on the air, you know that you have family.

In this moment I realise that the painful thought process that would have happened as I sat alone in my room, the thoughts and memories that were dragged up by love and grief, thoughts that I cannot stem as they crash in on me. These things were spoken, they were voiced to a friend, who sat in patience as I ebbed between releasing the fears that tore at me and holding them back. Now they have been spoken, listened to, now they will not tear me down - at least not tonight.

Elegy to a Writer.

I do not write to entertain. I do not write for amusement. I write because the words come rising up inside of me, like the music does when I can no longer hold myself back from dancing. I write because I cannot hold myself back, but also when I do place these words into form I hope, I pray that these might inspire one day someone, probably myself most of all. When I began to write a book the aim was to write something that I wanted to read - I couldn't find anything that fitted the sort of story that I wanted, so I began to write. It let me express feelings that I couldn't, it helped me know that I had something that was mine, that could never be taken from me or destroyed.

I've been trying to force myself to do academic writing this week, I am not well enough to do academic writing and I knew it at some point, but kept forgetting. I've been hating myself for not getting words onto a page, I've been remembering every moment where my identity as a writer was threatened, I've been grieving the death of a friend who used to sit with me as I wrote. I bought a ring yesterday to wear on the little finger of my right hand - I used to have rings on that finger and the feeling as I wrote was something special, then they used to mark the paper and so I would take it off and it would sit there as I wrote then be put back on. There were four rings - the first three broke for various reasons (the two of them had been replicas of sealing rings that I used to seal things - they hadn't been made for such work). The last one was stolen, the guy that stole it told me that he'd taken it later that week, I repressed that, I had no memory of that, until yesterday, suddenly it flashed into my head, this memory.

For years writing was all I had, a green exercise book and my Grandfather's Parker is how I started to collect my stories together. Then my first A4 black hardback and then my Waterman Ici Et La and A5 black hardback books, a green twisted glass pen with a pot of rose scented red ink as well. Together those stories sat, and now both a black A5 and a blue A4 collect my stories, my poems, my prayers, my thoughts, I write now with a Waterman Hemisphere, the ink changes colour dependant on my mood and purpose, most often grey because it looks elegant upon the page.

I no longer know how to write in desperation. There is too much in my mind to let the words flow without question. Yet I want to let them, I want to let go.

How do we live when the darkness seems to be all there is? We look to the light, to the brightness of the sun, to that which God gives us to illuminate the darkest of times. We are made beautiful, we are made perfect, our imperfection, our suffering is taken up by one greater than us. We do not walk alone.

We do not walk alone.

So I sit here, I rub my eyes again, the clouds clear the sun shines on me, my eye line reaches through the windows and the sun is shinning on me. I have to close my eyes because it is so bright, the warmth of this light upon my face and I remember. I remember who I am.

The desires of my heart are fulfilled, too great for me to achieve are the dreams I have, unless they are not my own dreams, then they will be brought to light this world. "This is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God. My tomorrow is his today. My distant hope is his 3D. And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great 'Amen!' from countless angels, from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself. And his is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner. Guaranteed." And I pray, I pray that the dreams that fill my heart, the visions that fill my mind are not my own, but they are his.

So I know, as I sit here, that I am becoming who he made me, I hope that this pain, this anger, this hurt can be turned to light, can be turned to purpose. Right now I need to reclaim the writer, the girl who would wake in the middle of the night to jot down an idea that could not be missed, the girl who could not leave without a pen and a scrap of paper, who has a supply of Starbucks napkin poems from those moments when she ran out of paper, who would spend a week perfecting an idea so that at the weekend she could sit and write, the line, the poem, the scene, the act, the movement.

The perfect book is like a ballet, ever piece can stand alone, every word is every step and they are beautiful alone, but together the symphony builds into a movement that brings tears to the eyes of the reader.

So much has changed in my life recently I'm starting to feel a bit lost. I gave up writing depressing self-indulgent blog posts three years ago except for moments of desperate need, this might be one, but also I just need to process and to write something and keep it hidden away in a diary feels like keeping something precious, writing it and burning it feels to radical, but writing something and letting it exist away from you, but be there, that's, somehow that's more comforting, more encouraging so if you're reading this and don't want to read something indulgently self-reflective then move on to something new, if not: welcome to my headspace.

The taste like an old familiar friend, the smooth watered down espresso, the sweet syrup, the warmth refreshing, remembering. Lying on cold polished granite, the echoes of noise a distance away, music in my ears, hiding the tears from the world, in this place that no one knows of, no one sees. Until the moment when the thoughts have been enough, when the fear has passed, when I can pull myself together enough to be alright, to be alive.

Unspeakable terror, fear that has passed on generation to generation, we know in our lives in our bones the horrors that cannot be talked of, cannot be fathomed, too much for those to bear, for those who love.