Spring Clean Me, 2015…

It is April, 2015 and I find myself sitting in a new room with a view, this time looking out over greenery and the suburbs rather than the city skyline and construction sites. The sun is shining through the window and onto my new writing desk, and for a moment a strange sense of ‘home from home’ comes over me. Maybe home is simply  ‘where I write’.

This is the first time in months I have been able to sit at a writing desk, on a Saturday morning, with no boxes and baggage stacked up around me, and feel myself, with time to think, and to pour out those thoughts into blogs, and better, into the fictional stories that have kept me going these last busy years.

The house I sit in is aging gracefully, as is my beloved mac, Ultimacia, who waits patiently in silver as I type these words. Somewhere outside cats roam and birds hunt, squirrels nest in a chimney that – for the time being – houses them without protest, and in another world the winds begin to rise and darkness readies its move, soon to force those within to face the truth of their past. But for now the sun shines and a tale told can be told again, more richly.

Life is never easy. That is a lesson I learned the hard truth of years ago, but the more I know this world the more I realise there are those who seek nothing more than to attack their fellows, with words and weapons, and who thrive on the misery they have wrought upon others.

I find it hard not to become disheartened by the world I see, and disappointed by those who act that way. I withdraw, I keep to myself; it is a primitive form of self-defence – predator, flee! But one cannot hide forever and there will always be predators.

So today I choose to step out into the sun and face all who would try and chase me away. Life is never easy, but it does not end until it ends, and I do not choose that end today.

For while the sun shines and there are words, then there are stories, and while there are stories there are better worlds to create and explore. A spring cleaning of the mind is the best kind. Dear world, I am returned.

Elloise Hopkins.