Dear Change

I’ve got to be honest with you: I’ve never been your biggest fan. I like familiarity and comfort, routine and confidence in knowing what’s to come. I do not like the prospect of you appearing, neither on the horizon with an element of warning before you, or suddenly and uninvited. This year, you’ve been far too familiar, making yourself at home in my life. Just as I get settled after one of your drop-ins, there you are banging on the door again. I thought when I first decided to write this letter, that it would be largely a telling-off, a complaint towards you and your thoughtlessness when it comes to letting me just live my life in peace. However, I do also want to thank you. For every visit that you’ve made, has brought with it, something good.

Your first major visit this year came when I went from happily working one day, picking up an 18-month old without question, to lying in a hospital bed the next, my insides torn apart and put back together. You were most definitely uninvited then, as I had spent a long time prior, confident in my body’s health status and, thus – perhaps a little overenthusiastically - enjoying all the joys that food had to offer. Waking up bright and early that Sunday morning in searing pain, I could sense your arrival was imminent. Things weren’t going to be as they had been from here on in. You took my physical and mental health and threw them into the air with no pre-agreement with me about where they might land.

Yet, had you not visited then, I would have not gained so much time in the home that I loved. Because of you, I got 7 unexpected, bonus weeks at the childhood home about to be sold. Instead of the odd weekend day noted in my diary to go and help sort and pack up, I gained so much more: my favourite bedroom turned, not for the first time, into a very comfortable recovery suite, mornings spent propped up with pillows next to mum, with a view over the garden and field, keeping my brain exercised with games of Wordle. Summer days spent with visits from family and friends, sitting in the garden or in the sunny shade of the drawing room, resting on the sofa. Because of you and your unexpected and uninvited presence, I can thank you from the bottom of my heart for the extra time that you gave me to say goodbye to a piece of my heart.

Of course, that goodbye was a whole other visit. By the point of completion, I had returned to work with you in my pocket, leading a slightly more trepidatious day-to-day routine with the children. But, at least with this visit, you were booked in. I knew you were coming and, thanks to your previous stay, I’d been given plenty of time to prepare for this one. In this sense, your presence at the end of the summer almost passed me by. It is only since then, on the odd weekend, or now as I spend my Christmas entirely within London’s city boundaries, that I am forced to reminisce on what I had and my heart aches, just a little. What you did teach me though, as you always seem to bring some lesson of sorts along with you, is that – not to be cliched – home isn’t really a place, but the people it contains. My family and I said goodbye to some walls, but really, nothing more, as the memories contained within them are carried with us wherever we go. Now, I write this from bed in my parents flat, in London, where I am, as ever, spending my Christmas break, at home.

For me, home has always been where my family is. I remember returning home to London after my recovery from surgery and feeling like I was leaving home in order to go back to work. Not long later, and you knocked on the door again. This time, in your hand, an invite to throw my life back up in the air, in the form of saying goodbye to my 4.5-year relationship and the life we’d shared from 2018 until that moment. I’ve always been scared of you, you know. And my relationship had been a particular area that you book-ended rather neatly. At the start, I feared you because I didn’t want to lose the friendship he and I shared. By the end, it was the same – my fear of you and not knowing what would happen to the relationship I so valued with this man I loved and cared about, made me terrified of doing anything about how I felt. But I pushed through and apparently let you lead the way, as I moved out of the flat we’d shared for over a year, and onto new living arrangements…

The first time living with a friend, as opposed to with my parents, in a home owned and operated by them, or with my boyfriend, a home jointly rented, but the admin and finances largely led by him. Suddenly, I was flailing in the open, my mind whirring with worries – what needs paying for? Who does the paying? What accounts do I need to set up? How do I take a bath for 3 hours when I share a bathroom with someone who doesn’t necessarily wish to see me nude…? You were everywhere and I felt overwhelmed by your presence. I cried daily, over every little thing: shopping – how, where, what? Managing meals after long-days out of the house. How do I spend my evenings without the consistency of the routine I’d become accustomed to over the last 4 years. Every single thing was new. I often woke up confused, not sure where I was and took a moment or 2 to remind myself where this bed was and where this room sat, and where my life was centred, in this new arrangement.

And yet, once again, you brought so much good with you. Almost 3 months on, and it’s hard to imagine not living where I am, with my friend, eating cheese at the kitchen table at the end of almost every meal, filling the fridge with Tupperware’s of batch-cooked lunches ready for the week ahead, asking questions such as ‘would you like to brush your teeth before I have my shower, or are you happy to wait?”. Evenings spent catching up on our day while we eat or sit on the sofa with an evening chocolate selection. When I first moved in, I took on the broadband account, and having never done anything so admin-like in my life, was filled with anxiety about what I needed to do. Yet, despite the hiccups that accompanied it, within a few weeks, I was able to declare we had Wifi and Netflix was on the cards again. You may have begun this particular visit bringing bags packed with anxiety and uncertainty, but I think, without me noticing, you did finally take your leave. Normality, in regards to my living situation, has taken your place.

Then, just as I was adjusting to you in my new home, I decided to introduce you to another aspect of my life, so that you might make yourself acquainted there. Dear Change, meet my work-life. I was getting too comfortable at home, and so used to having you around somewhere, I decided to discuss my future at my job with my bosses. Every conversation had – gentle discussions of the future of my role and where it was going, gave you a little more space to wiggle in. Not long into November and an agreement had been made that I would move on in 2023. So there you had it, somewhere new to take root. You were touring my life and this was a big stop for you. I’ve been in my job for almost 4 years so your impact was significant here. I’ve been through excitement, anxiety, uncertainty, imposter syndrome, back to excitement. You’ve taken me through all the emotions and now I sit somewhere in the middle of them all. While I’m terrified of the unknown, I’m also a little bit excited about what you might bring in 2023 in relation to my work. Together we decided I’d pursue something slightly new; helping care for tiny babies and their parents in those early days and weeks. I know you’ll be sticking around with me for a while now as all of this starts, but I think this time I’m ok with that.

So, for now that’s all. I just wanted to write it all down in a letter to you, to remind you how busy you’ve been in my life. I wanted to acknowledge how present you’ve been and remind myself how much I’ve been through as a result. And, more than that, I wanted to thank you. More times than I’d have liked this year, you’ve walked into my comfort zone, taken my hand and dragged me kicking and screaming into the unknown. Yet now, here I sit, approaching the last days of 2022, and it all feels like you simply did what was inevitable. You saw what needed to be done and you did it.

I don’t know what 2023 will bring but, if you come and visit, I’ll try and remember through the uncertainty and the bits that fill me with anxiety, fear and doubt, that at the end of it all, you might turn out to not have been all that bad. Now settle down for a while please so I can read and colour, stitch and see friends, and, above all, relax into the New Year.

Yours Sincerely,