And the sea still found me
It started at the airport — arrivals hall, arrivals heart.
My sister flew in from Dubai, and we all came to greet her:
me, Joel, Matilda, my mum and stepdad — a strange constellation orbiting the same tired joy.
I was already stretched thin from the week,
but I smiled anyway,
because love sometimes looks like showing up when you’re already running on echoes.
Matilda peeled off to spend time with my sister and mum.
Joel and I stole a moment for ourselves — a quick dip at the bathing pools.
The water was too shallow to swim,
but still the cold bit into my skin,
reminding my body that it’s real,
that I’m still in it.
We ate chips like teenagers. Picked up Tilly. Had a slow, quiet evening.
It felt like breathing — finally.
Sometimes, survival looks like chips and sea water.
But the breath didn’t last.
Saturday spun fast:
Joel at work, me driving my sister around, dropping off coffee, ferrying feelings.
Tilly was off on a playdate, and I was meant to rest — but instead I purged.
The kind of purge that feels holy and haunted at once.
I tore through clutter like it might save me.
It didn’t. But it helped.
She slept out. I worked myself sore.
I was grateful to be alone, and utterly wrecked at the same time.
And then Sunday.
A call from my stepdad.
My aunt. A&E. Possible stroke.
Just like that, everything unravelled.
I sat with family in fluorescent light,
watching monitors blink,
trying to hold my spine straight
while my heart folded inwards.
A hospital chair can feel like both battlefield and altar.
I have seen so much of that hospital.
I’ve sat in its waiting rooms with grief clenched between my teeth.
I’ve walked its halls for my dad, for my gran, for me, for Alan, and now again for my aunt.
Every corridor has known my pacing.
Every beep feels like an old bruise pressed too hard.
I am tired of the smell of antiseptic.
Tired of the kindness in nurses’ eyes.
Tired of the fight.
After the visit, I collected Tilly, dropped her to her dad’s,
and returned to the ward where time moved like thick air.
Later, a brief stop — Joel and Luca at his mum and dads,
A soft moment in a sharp day.
Then a half-hour swim at Port Grat — salt and silence,
the only baptism I had left in me.
Falling into the cold, I remembered:
even when everything aches, the sea still finds me.
Evening fell with Chinese food at my mum’s.
Mum, Alan, my sister.
Warm hands, tired faces.
We tried films later, Joel and I — but nothing worked.
We ended up with Final Destination 3,
because sometimes you need something absurd when life feels too sharp.
We both fell asleep before it ended,
wrapped up in exhaustion and each other.
And there, wrapped in that quiet, I realised —
falling asleep with someone who knows the shape of your tired is a kind of healing.
I am still standing.
Still dipping into cold water.
Still picking up chips with salt-wet fingers.
Still carrying love, even when it’s heavy.
And that counts.
That has to count.