Ceasefire (Catch-22).

Six weeks from today, if all goes to plan, the place from which I'm typing this will no longer be my home. And because Life, there will not yet be another physical home on that date, and the waiting will begin. Until at which point it is not, home will be transient and vague and unpredictable, but always, always with my beautiful son.

That will have to do. Because I need to go. 

Now.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, nothing was. But as I've learned over many years across many miles, no Master Plan ever manifests itself completely. And if you aren't prepared to craft plans B-ZZ on the fly, you are toast. 

And you will be rolled.

Despite the endless opportunities to prepare for this moment-to-be, to anticipate and face That Day that I've been looking for (sadly for some time now) it's still currently suffocating me, and choking me, and kicking my ass. 

Because endings are hard. 

Because the only real way to survive an ending is to skip straight over it and focus on the beginning to follow. But considering the fact that this particular fresh start will follow an event which managed to last 22 years, it feels desperately unfair to shut it off with no emotion, like nothing more than a dripping and rusted old tap which keeps you up all night.

When I tally up everything I did until age 22, it's quite a list. In fact if you were to lay it out, it'd probably look a bit like that giant filing cabinet full of prayers in the old Jim Carrey film, its laughter and excitement and promise spilling over like a particularly exuberant glass of prosecco. 

22 years is an awfully long time. Unfortunately, some banks of two decades just don't shine like the rest. Disappointment has led the charge of this recent set of years, the promise of what could have been, broken like so many others. The mismatch clear, the last bastion of hope worn paper thin like that old blanket I stole off a friend of a friend of a friend, way on back in the midst of that initial shining 22. When I used to actually DO things. You know - like go to parties, and concerts...and participate in the world. 

Yin, meet Yang.

To answer the question 'where will we go now?' is more poignant than ever, because there is still not a hard-coded answer at present, other than Out. Away. Onward. Forward.

Ah, hello Venn! Knew you'd come.

So we'll go, together, me and my boy. Into joy, with hope, bringing along more promise than I could have possibly imagined. Sometimes people move on at different paces for different reasons, but the small one and I have always gelled. I'm grateful for that. It may not always be the case.

This past 22 has taught me as much. And so much more.

All things for a purpose. All roads paved with their own version of why. And only now do I really understand that 'why' is not always a question.

42 days. Six weeks. 

The end of what was meant to be forever, and when forever breaks and you realise you cannot simply step out of some matrix and get back to living unscathed, but instead have to draw in a breath and press down shoulders and say because I AM, and I will continue to be, and I must. 

And so I shall.

It's a lot like the run up to Christmas, one minute you're swimming in the summer sea, browning yourself like a bean, and the next you're watching your mother smash all the dead wrapping paper into a bag as you squeal from one treasure to the next. Time rolls. And this particular tsunami of change is screaming HELLO from the safety of a place that will all too soon no longer be my own.

And it's CHRISTMAS!

And I have to jester! And laugh! And play!

And pack. And sort. And consider what may have been and wasn't. And try to keep it together. For him. For Us.

(Focus. Skip over. Look ahead.)

Ho ho ho.

I celebrated a colleague's wedding yesterday and with only the slightest twinge of sorrow remembered what *it* should still look like. It wasn't truly melancholy at all, but aspirational. 

But this life: this velvet Elvis, odd to the touch despite careful attention to detail, the effort of painting a shared tomorrow far more than the finished work was worth. Love for sale, discounted, dusty in the corner. Encased in a haze of light shining through a clouded window. What once shone has dimmed. 

Turn out the light. Close the door. Step outside.  Tick tock.

The race of my life has begun and here I've only just been taught how to read a map. My legs are weak, I'm off-season, and used up, and not as trained as I should be. 

Like any other race, I genuinely have no idea how this one will end. Like no other race, I'm not presently confident I even know where the finish line is. I'm in the midst of a ceasefire on my beloved trails because this other race is everything. I haven't got the time to sharpen recreational arrows right now. No time to fill that quiver of fun. No time to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

One day. Again, one day. And what a day that will be.

Until then, six weeks and I will be equally free and lost. 42 days until home is ONLY where the heart is. I'm giddy. I'm terrified. I'm in bits and wound up.

But I've got my shoes on.

I've got my playlist ready.

I've got my crewmate by my side.

And I certainly know how to keep moving.

I know how to face these kinds of challenges because I've been practicing for years.

And you always wondered why it is that I run so much.

#relentlessforwardprogress #lfg