What's this all about eh?

Well I have been trawling through old pictures again.

I had taken pictures of myself when the black dog was heaviest on my back, when I was losing the battle well and truly, when I wasn't sure how this would all work out, or if it would at all. I took the pictures to show my doctor when words weren't coming easily. I wanted to draw them, to show what I was too scared to say.

         

I could name them...tired, empty, sad, defeated, embarrassed...these pictures sit in my iphoto in a folder called 'stuff to draw'. 

But further in, hidden amongst a whole hodgepodge of photos from the past year or so is this photo:

Taken by surprise, by someone at work. No mask either way. And what I am struck by is how SICK I look. I guess I was. The black dog is not just in our heads.

Now I am so much better. It's not that things are better. Things were never bad in the first place. But I am better. It is under control. I'm winning. 

Welcome to a world too beautiful for grief.