When I was 8, my beautiful cat Portia disappeared.
I was distraught.
I looked in all the usual places, even the sports bag he once travelled on the school bus inadvertently in.
Not there.
Days passed, tears ran, hysterics firmly in situ.
I was distraught.
It became apparent that Portia was not going to come home.
Dead or alive, gone for good.
And my tiny little brain, couldn't cope.
I had never known loss like it.
I couldn't comprehend it.
Why? How? Was it me? Was it my fault?
The pain of losing something I loved so much.
It was something I remembered feeling, but didn't understand.
My mother wrote a letter to my teacher, to explain what had happened.
To explain my behaviour.
My tears. My trauma.
And she was annoyed.
That I couldn't or wouldn't pull myself together and get on with things.
That was my first memory of what death or loss felt like.
The second time I remember feeling such pain was my grandfathers funeral.
I stood next to my mother in a church. Front row.
And she did a Melania Trump.
Stoney face, grief stricken, hidden under a pair of Chanel sunglasses.
I reached for her hand and she slapped it away like I was Donald Trump.
Bitch please.
Barker's don't cry. Barker's don't really do emotion of any sort unless it's anger.
I know this all too well.
And for the duration of my grandfathers funeral service, I too was stoney faced and cold.
Stalwart in our silent grief.
And then his WW2 service hat felt off his coffin as it was drawn into the fires and I leapt from my church pew, in hysterics, tears streaming down my face, red, puffy, devastated but not understanding why, and placed his hat back ontop of his coffin, panting
"He can't go without it, he needs it, he needs it,"
That memory stands firm in my mind, whenever I think of death and I think of grief, I wonder what it is to process, in a normal fashion, because when I hear of death, I am consumed with a backlog of grief and emotional baggage and it overwhelms me in ways I still don't understand.
Let me explain.
On Sunday just gone, I saw friends, actual human faces, amidst this ongoing pandemic, and in Tier 3 - panic not; social distancing was of course observed - Sarah and I are fairly tenacious regarding Covid as you can imagine.
Walking around in the cold, we trudged around Hollingworth Lake, our old stomping ground and I was consumed with a different emotion all together.
Immense relief and gratitude.
I have moments in 2020, 2019, where I have an outer body experience, and I look at my life and it feels like someone else's because it's not something I ever thought I would have.
I sat on the sofa in our little festive flat this evening, and I cried. I said to Sarah
"I can't explain it, you couldn't understand what I mean when I say, I've spent forever, before you, with you, trying to find who I am, know who I am, and now I have it, I feel like it could all unravel," and I faltered, with immense emotional cracks. My chin wobbled. And I couldn't contain this strange emotion.
I'm happy. Happier than I have ever been.
Walking around a lake on a cold december morning with the kindest people I know, who I treasure, more than I thought possible, I realised just how far I've come.
That the life I have, the life I live, is of my making. The people I fill my days and heart with, are beautiful and fill me with joy. I really am happy.
But it's never easy. I am yet to know a period of my life where I could say it was easy.
We live our life with demons day to day, and its all consuming and sucks joy from the smaller things, no matter how much safeguarding we put in place.
So cards on the table friends, 2020 has been a shit show.
We are a year on with baby making plans, the grand ambition, get married, start a family. Stalled.
The diagnosis of PCOS for me was a short lived relief, the knowledge of having just one ovary to work with, and limited at that, was a suffocating pressure - literally, all of my eggs are in one basket. And if that basket doesn't have many eggs left, my grand plans of being mother of the century are swiftly out of the window.
Heaven forbid it was easy.
What about Sarah you ask? The perks of a gay relationship, two potential mummies.
Alas, running alongside my fertility saga, hairy faced drama, weight gain/loss/gain/loss fit/fat/fit/fat, comes something much more harrowing.
My darling wife, superstar to all who know her, rock, absolute pinacle of all that is good in my life, received much more life changing news.
We're all about the polycystic in this house - Sarah was diagnosed with autosomal dominant polycystic disease this year; something shes grappled with more and more so over the past few years, but has become more prominent over the past 18 months - and much like my PCOS, she knew something was afoot and finally got the answers she was looking for. Many tests, scans, pokes and prods, and lo' a diagnosis that brings with it fear, anxiety, lifestyle changes, dangers and ultimately a life limited disease that renders our plans to grow old and grey and saggy naggies together into our 80's less likely as we grow old disgracefully together.
In a year that has served up drama left right and centre, a global pandemic, family ill-health, mental health, infertility, an abundance of negative pregnancy tests and crying on the toilet, now serves us a year into our marriage - a shorter happily ever after than we planned.
So for anyone who fancies lending us a kidney or an ovary, just say the word.
I digress.
2020 has been a shit show.
But it has also shown the true depth of strength as to who we are. I've always regarded my bounce backs and the fact I'm alive at 33, is due to some inbuilt strength - in reality, that's not it all. My existence up until recent years, has been entirely thanks to a land of delusion, a mental health disorder and drug addiction that has supported a disengagement with reality, allowing me to exist and cope in my own backwards way.
Who I am now, is a person of resilience, in the face of this drama, trauma, chaos. Something has changed. I keep expected to break. Because who could juggle this?
We can.
We can. I talked to our friends as we walked around an almost frozen lake, and their love and solidarity, warmed my heart and gave me hope.
We can. There is nothing we can't face together. And no matter what the weeks, months and future brings, I am hopeful.
Last night, we received news, of loss, of pain, of death, in the family.
And it should have, could have been the straw that broke the camels back - but we sat together, held hands together, and felt grateful, that in the face of loss - we were oh so lucky to have the life we have together.
And of course it provoked my need to write - because my unfamiliar processing of emotions peaked - what is it to grieve?
I was consumed with sadness, for Sarah, for her family, for what it is to lose a loved one. I was overwhelmed with pride at the work she does in fighting cancer on a daily basis. But as she lay asleep in my arms, I was wide awake.
Ever since I was a child, I've never understood what death is. That someone or something is there and then gone. Remembered and then forgotten. The ceasing to exist always boggled my brain and continues to do so.
Covid makes it particularly difficult, as we can't rush over and hold the family members that need it. We can't hold the hands of those who want it. We can't mourn together en-mass and remember together.
It's the cost of this chaos.
Whenever someone dies, whenever theres a funeral to plan, to attend, I panic. I worry. I pick up my phone and want so desperately to call my mum and dad and check they are ok, alive in the least, because I know if they are dead and buried, no-one will have told me and it will be up to me to check.
There have been family funerals I've been barred from attending.
There have been family funerals I wish I hadn't, banished from gravesides and the right to mourn.
For the love of god, I only found out my Nana had passed recently and she had been dead for two years - this is the curse I carry as the black sheep and cast out. The life I chose and the family I left behind to build the one I now call mine.
On my wedding day, the family member we lost yesterday and I had a moment.
He took more photos than our photographer. He kissed me and told me how beautiful I looked.
I told him how happy I was that he could be there, and he cried, hugged me, and was so glad he had the chance to see Sarah marry me.
So what is death? It's memories like that, which will forever bring joy and remind me that the family I have now, the family I have the priveldge to be a part of, to build my own with Sarah in whatever way we find possible, makes me the luckiest person in the world.
And no matter how much time we have, every second is worth it, and I won't regret a single one. Never again.
I know who I am.
