AWOL

Adjective (military): absent without official leave but without intent to desert.

Two years ago I went absent without official leave from Lwile the Leo. On May 4, 2021 at 13.31 hours I put up my usual Mental Health Awareness Month post before handing over to the guest post writers. And unbeknownst to me and you dear reader, that would be my last consistent blog post for 729 days. I ended the post by saying:

However, while Mother’s Day is already making me sad, it is not my only source of stress. In fact it is not even among the top three things that are currently stressing me the fuck out, hence I said I am worse off than last year. Last week when I started writing this post I was really struggling with my mental health. Thankfully I am in a much better space now, but I also know full well how my mental fitness ebbs and flows, and the closer we get to Mother’s Day the harder it will be for me to hold on to this positive wave I am currently riding. So I am grateful for this break because I need to dedicate some quality time to my mental health.
See you in June and till then have a lovely, healthy, peaceful May and stay safe.

June came but I did not, and in the two years since then I have only put up five blog posts:

1. nne (where I reveal the when and why of my wedding date)
2. 30 Things I Love About My Boyfriend (in honour of my now fiancé’s 30^th birthday)
3. December 13 2021 (in honour of the fourth anniversary of my mum’s death)
4. The Easiest “YES” I Ever Did Say (where I shared all the details of my magical beachside proposal)
5. Happy Midnights Day (on the day Taylor Swift released her record shattering 10^th studio album titled Midnights)

I have said many times before that writing is not what I do, it is who I am. So for me to only write five posts in two years meant that something was broken inside of me, and while I was aware of that, I was not fully cognisant of the extent until my therapist opened my eyes to it in February this year. At the time I put up that post I had no intention to desert and had every intention of coming back in June. But in mid-May I quietly made the decision to take even more time away with the aim of coming back in August for my blogiversary. The blogiversary post was to serve as my comeback post where I explained why I went AWOL, but as we all know that never happened. Two years later my comeback post is finally here so I suppose better late than never, right? 😅

So where have I been? Why did I go away for 729 days? What have I been up to? Those are some of the questions I intend to answer this month in lieu of the Mental Health Month guest posts. I usually have guest posts in May to show others that they are truly not alone, and to add more voices to the fight to destigmatise conversations around mental health because every mind matters. But because it has been two years since I posted consistently and want to refamiliarise my readers with my voice, I will instead be sharing the story of my absence in a series of three posts:

1. Cracks (the happiness I had been chasing all my life and finally found in 2019 started to crack in 2020)
2. Crashing Down (the cracks persisted and my happiness came crashing down in 2021)
3. Lost (the one word I would use to describe myself in 2022)