My name is Jaq. I’ve reached the age where my feet are criss-crossed with purple veins and getting up requires a thought process around which muscles I will exert to do it. But I’m still young enough to not quite pass for middle aged just yet. I live in the middle of nowhere near the border between England and mid Wales, with my husband JB, in a house that is maybe too big for two people but fits us just right. I should probably have had children but it’s not a thought that bothers me too often, I like our life and why strain the environment because my kids would be cuter and smarter than everyone else?
So I’ve reached this age and gained this weight and battled this depression and anxiety for half my life. The biggest shocker to the world that I never reveal is that I am terrified of sex (here’s hoping no one I know reads this). There are reasons for this, things that have happened, no need to rush our relationship to that level – I’d just like to set the scene for where I am and where I’m heading. I am on a journey.
I made a decision that I don’t want to feel this tired or look down at my sausage legs crammed into trousers another size up or find myself in A&E with chest pains and non-stop nausea when it turns out my anxiety has turned up the volume and is demanding to be heard through every new way it can make my ageing body falter and fail. So I made a decision. A decision was made. Actions were taken. I started.
I’m already a few months into this journey and writing this I realise the nausea I carried around for three solid months is not there anymore, and though I can’t really see it yet, my trousers had to be relegated for heavier days as they’re now baggy. And I’m starting to feel fucking fantastic. So maybe it seems I don’t need this journey anymore but I am still only a few steps in to a lifelong journey to pave a road that isn’t riddled with the potholes of my anxiety or get washed away with the mudslide of my depression.
This blog is for all the different ways I choose to add bricks to that road. I will cover my therapy, decluttering (my next big focus), weight loss, mental health and any other steps I’m trying out whether useful or not, whether they make big leaps or help me just keep trudging on. I named this blog The Only Life after the ending in the poem “The Journey” by Mary Oliver. I hope it touches you like it touched me.
NOTE: Just assume that there may be triggers on this blog. That’s kind of the point and I’m too old for labelling trigger warnings on everything.
THE JOURNEY BY MARY OLIVER
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.
