Thunder, Downpour, Sunshine, Sparkle, Repeat.

Whispers in the wind of a summer that slipped away.

Dearest friend,

My summer was a storm - how about yours?

With love,

V.V

That’s the reduced on the simmering hob for 12 hours version of what I want to say, I think.

Every time I start writing to you my mind cuts and skips and messes it up. This is the fourth attempt at writing. A summer of doing and being has reduced my brain function right back to prehistoric levels (in a time oriented sense rather than saying cave dwellers were of little brain). Words errantly hopscotch across the page with the accuracy of a toddler full of sugar and E-numbers instead of flowing calmly. Writing not being sure how to form itself in a logical manner (the actual words as well as the meaning I’m trying to portray with them) and ideas taking flight like a field full of birds startled by some sudden noise they cannot fathom.

I want to tell you all my adventures in the detail they deserve, not because I want to brag but because all of life deserves to be shared in glorious technicolour rather than as a stick-man zoetrope. I think that larger than life re-retelling of stories helps fix the events in our own minds as well as provide inspiration for others. Though I’m not sure quite how inspiring my adventures actually are? They seem pretty mundane because I lived them, but then I write things like “camping on the Welsh coast” or “road-tripping to see Taylor Swift” and feel fizzy with excitement. Maybe writing is a way of packaging and re-branding our experiences to make them feel how they really felt, rather than a watered down version of events that we can just about remember if prompted.

I want to tell you about my road-trip to see Taylor Swift, because YES! I MADE IT! It was a huge deal for me and a massive part of my ongoing recovery and helping to get my brain function back. But that story seems unready to be covered in the glitter and sequins it deserves to be paraded out in. I want to tell you about our summer of live music and handing out friendship bracelets at the shows we went to, and making them with people at a festival we were at, and how much joy that all spread. I want to share beach trips and danglings of feet in pools up on the moors and all the nature that so graciously presented itself to us when we’ve been out and about. I want to tell you about the dolphin that I saw from the beach after requesting it for my birthday (sometimes the universe really delivers, you just have to ask). And more, so much more.

I almost want to tell you about the flip side of it all with an angry teenager and a house that refuses to be fixed or renovated and a car that feel is like it will break any day and dodging rainstorms booking last minute holidays, because if I’m camping I definitely don’t want to be doing it in the tail end of a hurricane again. Because that’s all part of the storm, the magic of the thunders, downpour, rainbow, sunshine, sparkle, repeat that has been the past few months / a lifetime.

It has been one of the most extraordinary times and, oddly, one of the most mundane. I think the stories refuse to be committed to paper because it’s all been too much for my brain to process. I feel like those moments will begin to unfurl over time, fern leaves ready to be pressed between pages and kept forever and when they do, probably the moment will have passed for you to care, if it was ever even there in the first place.

Maybe “Notes” is the place I can actually unfurl all the magic because I don’t feel the need to make it coherent and special and like it should have an underlying message, because, dear reader, when it comes to writing to you, I get a horrible case of “stage fright”.

So, until then, this letter comes to you, without structure (because the scaffolding for my ideas is about as good as the one that went up for re-pointing my house - but that’s a story for a different time) or real meaning because simply, I have missed writing to you. I feel like if I wait for all the stars to align and all the words to gather themselves in the right order to tell the right stories that have finally decided to show up in a way that makes sense, we will both be waiting for a very long time. Or maybe no time at all? Everything brain related right now feels like whispers in the wind, but weather changes, doesn’t it?

And so for now, I’m choosing to write to you as best I can in the knowledge that you are gentle and kind and won’t judge me and my run on sentences and over use of parentheses as harshly as I am judging myself, and maybe you missed me too, a bit, and so are willing to let it slide that the words aren’t perfect, they’re not unicorns leaping through meadows to a moonlight misty dawn by any stretch, but they are mine, and they are here, and showing up is the beginning of something magical, I think. Because I hope that the more I try to write, the more accepting of the exercise my brain will become and that one day soon all of the beautiful things that are nestled in my head, will find their way to you. If you have any experience of Post Concussion Syndrome or brain fog recovery I’d love to hear from you on how you got your words (and world) back in order.

All that having been said, as there comes to be less light in the day and the days are more often slicked over with mist and fog than not, somehow my thoughts become clearer. Like the fog acts as a signal blocker to all the background noise of everything, paints days back to a milky white canvas. I guess that winter does a similar thing. a pause for dramatic effect, the dialling back of days to something soft and dreamlike. There are gentle adventures to be had in those days too and permission to shelter from the storm rather than pressure to venture out in it, lest you waste the day away.

Because in autumn there is a drifting kindness that envelopes us as we hunker down for winter.

I often think that summer is my favourite time and then autumn arrives with its mellow everything and golden hues, its damp smells that delight the senses and long nights that lend themselves to fires and blankets and hot chocolates woven into the two, and I’m not so sure.

I had other things I wanted to say to you, but alas they seem to have already run off for hot chocolate and an episode of Game of Thrones. Ever late to the party, I’m on season seven. Don’t tell me what happens, I’m a notorious spoiler magnet. But is Lord Tyrion OK and does he makes it to the end? I hope so. But don’t tell me even though I just asked. I feel like I peaked too soon and this would have been perfect winter watching but I’m sure I’ll find something else to fall into. Heavens forbid, maybe I can even manage to get back to reading books with some frequency? Happily accepting recommendations on either.

Signing off for now with love and gratitude for your patience with my splintered brain ramblings,

V.V

Still with me? I love writing letters, but even more I love getting them back. Tell me about your favourite seasons or books / TV / film to fall into with lots of long nights ahead here in the top half of the globe. It’s not quite a letter back, but I’d love it all the same.

If you know someone who would enjoy this post, please do pass it on.