Self Love is the most important type of love.

I think an important part of life comes down to self-love and self-care. If you're not comfortable, you won't have a good time, no matter what it is that you're trying to do.

I'm quite big on self-care. It's something I try to fit into my life as often as I can, either through taking time to rest and do something I enjoy, or picking music that makes me smile while I do work that I can't get out of.

I've taken up meditation again, and started to try my hand at yoga, and my body feels less like a place I'm not welcome in.

But for all that, I'm not as stable as I usually think I am, not yet. I still get thrown off my small things, with a bad spell of dissociation last week because I spiralled into low self-worth being a noteworthy example. Self-care isn't something short term, it isn't a plan that solves everything. For me, it's a part of my routine, and I try to impliment it as much as possible.

A big part of my self-care is building an environment where I feel comfortable. For me, that's mostly my flat. I have a few cafes I feel safe in, one of which I really hope I get to work in, but predominantly I spend my time at home.

I surround myself with things that make me happy. Our table is right next to a wall full of One Direction photos, photos of the day I met Moony, the poem they wrote me, various items my sister sent me. We have a small collection of books - nothing like what I was forced to leave behind in Dorset - and roses that I got Moony last year because they'd mentioned wanting flowers.

This is my safe space, this is where I know who I am, and I know my true personality can shine through. Whenever I feel like I don't know who I'm supposed to be, I look around this flat, and I remember.

On how my family fucked me up.

It has recently become apparent to me that I neglected using this blog at a time when I may have needed it most.

A friend wrote recently that often creative people stop being creative when they feel sad, and that's what happened here. This has been my safe space since I set the blog up back when I didn't have this name, I was still in an abusive household.

When I started this blog, I was a kid. I use that term fairly loosely these days, but it is a word that here means naive, optimistic and scared. I had a safety net that lived on the other side of the ocean, and I had no idea that those closest to me were worse than I thought they could ever be when I came to respecting my representation.

Every now and again, I scroll back through this blog, and I find that post I wrote the day Moony went back to Sweden, and I got called for an intervention in the wake of finally telling my parents that I'd changed my name legally months earlier. It's probably self-destructive, to read back through that, to see the words they actually said, the words I typed out in a room lit only by my screen, blurred through tears that didn't stop until well into the night, replaced by a constant ache in my chest.

Life is about moving forwards, about letting go of the things that hold you back, but I'm not moving on, really.

I'm going to dedicate some proper time to how my life is now, but even with all this. Even with the life I'm carving for myself as I learn how to be independent and fall in love with this town, my partner, and myself, I won't be able to get rid of the grief I feel each time I recall something related to my home, to my family.

I was saying to my sister just now, I'd love to keep up a steady contact with them. I want nothing more than to send a witty e-mail to my dad, and get some stupid joke in return without it feeling about as natural as a science-fiction horror piece worthy of H R Giger. But it isn't easy, and it isn't possible at this moment in time.

And that's still with me, every day. Brighton is often a place people flee to in order to escape something, and it works, but you can't escape your past.

This was a bit bleak, and not very helpful in the grand scheme of my recovery, but I'll do better next time.