This is me, showing up, with my scribbles, stories, shifting moods, and messy humanity. Welcome to the madness 💛

February 2016 I. am. struggling. It’s hard to explain what it feels like to exist without waking. Weeks, months, maybe even a year, pass and I feel as if I’ve never truly been present. A heavy cloud sits over my brain, smothering thought, clarity, and focus. I try to sit with my thoughts, focusing on my breathing. I deploy affirmations like tools in a futile attempt to calm my mind, to grab onto something real. But the thoughts flitter away like dandelions in the breeze. I can’t hold them. I can’t make sense of them. The familiar spiral begins as the month edges toward my period. Anxiety, panic, and dread…

February brought therapy sessions heavy with discussions of my mother and brother. I tried to shield my anxiety from my boyfriend, but old memories crept back like flash floods, and I found myself unravelling in private moments. Eventually, I shared extracts from my diary, hoping he might understand the layers of my behavior and the scars I carried. By March, our five-year anniversary loomed. I tried to read him, gauge the chance of a proposal. Things felt better between us after some emotional restructuring in my life – I’d let go of the weight of Nick, reorganized my contract at work, and found more joy in our interactions. Still, he…

In November 2011, Nicholas celebrated his birthday with a visit from my much older stepsister, Carina. The conversation that followed changed everything. She called me afterward, alarmed at the state of our mother. The full story of my mother’s alcohol and drug abuse poured out in a torrent, and for the first time, I was not alone in carrying it. Carina was horrified, and together we began to strategize. Nicholas needed to be removed from that home environment – and I knew she was right. We met with Lindy Ackermann, the counsellor at SACS Junior School who had been seeing Nicholas for years. When we laid out everything, we finally…

My mom didn’t just fall apart after my brother’s suicide – she shattered. Quietly at first, in ways only I could see. Then loudly, in ways no one could ignore. The drinking started as a coping mechanism, then became a daily ritual. Cocaine followed, not as a thrill, but as a crutch to survive the days she didn’t want to be alive for. What came after 2006 was a long, painful blur: alcohol, drugs, paranoia, aggression, suicide threats, boyfriends who hurt her, rehabs, overdoses, and me trying to steady a sinking ship. She burned through her inheritance from Ossi as though it were on fire. I’d sit with her at…