So the husband has gone into the office for the day, I thought I wouldn’t today, thought I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t take this opportunity of working from home on my own to let the tears flow, but that they have, like they always do when I’m on my own.

There is so much to cry for, there always has been but I’ve always exceeded expectations, other peoples expectations and my own. I’ve always been strong, not believing I was strong but realising when looking back I was as strong as an Ox !! I didn’t waste time on tears, I thought of ways to make things better. Then April 2015 I was given my dad back, I’d lost him through circumstance but Allah had gifted him back to me. Everyone says I was lucky to have those few days with him before he slept for weeks and then was gone. How is this luck, how do I make it better? I still mourn him. I’m still ashamed of all the mistakes I make, wondering if he’s looking down at me. I take each step with an unsteady foot, not knowing if I’m placing it in the right direction, not knowing if the ground beneath me will give way and consume me as I fall? From the moment my Dad left to this very moment now, each decision I make is with uncertainty, I’ve realised my dad was my anchor and without him I’m drifting aimlessly. I want to make him proud, this year I know I’ve disappointed. The next year I want to be the best person I can to the rest of my family so he can see I’m happy.

One of his last conversations with me, he said he was going to keep fighting, he was going to pull through because he didn’t want me to be sitting at home on my own crying with no shoulder to lean on and no-one to talk too. He said it broke him up thinking that’s what would happen if he left. I told him to get better but that I was strong, I’d be ok. I sit here wishing I could pretend I was ok when I was on my own, so he could know I was ok. But the silence is consumed with my aching sobs. I cry out for him but he can’t reach me. I fall apart but he can’t fix me anymore. I can’t believe the person I’ve become this year. Does this really happen to people when they lose a loved one? Do they really become monsters, shadows of their former selves?? I’m ashamed to write down the things I’ve thought, the things I’ve done, the people I’ve trusted and the people I stopped trusting.

I’m 33 years old, surely I can’t still be making stupid mistakes, I’ve lived a hard life to here, my 33 years have been filled with more upset and turmoil than I suspect most face in a long lifetime but I should have learnt from that past. I should have learnt how to protect myself and others around me. And yet I didn’t. It’s become apparent I don’t know myself at all. I don’t know what I’m capable of and I can’t see what others are capable of either. So where does that leave me? Limbo. A lost place where I’m not here and I’m not there. I need to stop relying on others to fix me, I need to stop turning to people I feel will help, they won’t. They were never there to help. I now accept my errors, I accept I made wrong choices, I hurt people that didn’t deserve it and the blame solely lies with me. The next year I’ll build a cocoon. A shell around the people that matter the most, the ones that have been silently here and will continue to be so. I’ll build a perfect little world for my perfect little family. 2017 is going to be a good one, one of the best yet, that shining star in the sky, my Dad will look down and feel proud again, proud I’m his daughter.