The airport is throbbing with people. A sea of masks. A field of anxious eyes. People's voices muffled beneath the fabric. The sharp scent of hand sanitiser and fear.

My hands are clutching slightly crumpled A4 sheets of paper. My flight details, vaccine certificate, international vaccine certificate. My passport. It's been a long time since I was in an airport. I’m still in Sydney and yet it already feels like some foreign place. The hum of worried murmurs fills the air.

I join one of the snaking queues and slowly shuffle forward with my backpack. I'm early of course, but so is everyone else. As if they're scared that even a small mishap might derail everything. This hope, this excitement, it feels precious and fragile – like it could shatter at any moment.

When I finally reach the counter, my knees are shaking. There's a jagged stone in my stomach. I'm terrified I will be denied passage and be doomed to stay in this place – where I have no home, no job, no life.

But the man at the check-in has kind eyes. He asks me to lift my mask as he studies my passport and compares it to my face. I don't really recognise the young woman in that photo, she looks so young, so full of life, so carefree – but I hope that he does. He nods, checks my bag in and hands me a boarding pass. I feel like a fugitive as I thank him and scurry to the security line.

At the boarding gate, I am giddy. I call my mother. I call my brother. I call my best friend. Then, there is nothing left to do but wait.

After aeons of impatience, boarding commences. The flight is long. I'm caught somewhere between an unsettling adrenaline high and a torrent of accumulated exhaustion that has been creeping up on me for months. The rest is a blur. Singapore, ugly carpet. Another snaking queue to board the flight. Decidedly average plane food. Helsinki, seven types of waste bin and a restaurant at every gate. Now that's civilisation. And finally – after an eternity, Stockholm.

Clean, crisp, and a sea of faces. With mouths. And smiles. Not a single mask in sight. I tear the stinking fabric from my face and deposit it in the nearest trash can. The pandemic is finally over.

If everything that I can imagine is real

I shall think happy thoughts

Of peaceful valleys and vibrant nature

Of children playing and soft music

I shall dream of abundant harvests

And cosy hearths

A place where all have somewhere safe

To rest their weary head

Where soft hands rest on those who suffer

Where kind words and gentle tones abound

A world where the stitches of community

Are treasures beyond measure

A world with nature at it's centre

In all it's varied seasons

Where creativity can flourish

And healing is part of the lifelong journey

Where families and friends

Support and comfort each other

And each unique soul is embraced

With understanding and acceptance

I write the things I cannot say

The jagged truths

That make me quake and hide

I write to make sense of myself

Of the world, of beauty

Of my place within it all

I write to make people feel

To laugh, to cry, to understand

This great life adventure

I feel it always

Lurking in the shadows

Scraping its claws

Down the walls of my mind

Whispering such awful things

Adulthood is an exercise

In resisting these baser instincts

To lust and feast

To think only of myself

Of my pleasure and delight

It dreams of violence

Malevolence and control

It sings that I am special

That the rules that govern others

Should not apply to me

Sometimes I fall

For it's silky bear-trap promises

I become the beast,

I bite and growl and injure

Then retreat into the safety of my den

I wish that kindness were effortless

As easy as breathing

But most days it is a struggle

To be empathetic of others

To be compassionate to myself

The beast delights in shame

It wraps it around us both

Like a devastating cloak

It dances across the day

Stamping me beneath it's heavy feet

It leaves no room

For more delicate sensibilities

Like love or tenderness

There is only survival

Survival at any cost

It must have saved me too

This animal inside me

Fought when I couldn't fight myself

With tooth and claw and rage

Fought to survive

Is life a journey to resist the beast

To tame that wild animal

To make it pliable and calm

Or is it futile madness

To resist who I am, when no-ones watching?

The fog is clearing

From the corners of mine eyes

As years slip by

The haze dissipates

And I start to see

What was shrouded

Slowly revealed

Through the layers

Of mist and conditioning

Of youth and foolishness

The things of true import

Time, freedom, love

Understanding, growth

Patience and kindness

Truth - I see the truth

And I long to speak it

To shout to the rooftops

What has taken me a lifetime

To try to understand

But all comes in good time

It is clear now

As the sand flows through

That pain leads to understanding

To kindness and patience

And the ability to revel in peace

That broken hearts lead to tenderness

To care and gentle words

To tears kissed away

To shared cups of tea

And wicked cryptic crosswords

Aching joints and muscles

Lead to exercise and movement

And delighting in the pleasure

Of inhabiting this body

In all its perfect imperfection

Fits of sadness and depression

And retreating to the jagged

Grey corners of my heart

Make the sunshine warmer

The flowers more radiant

The sand that's flowed is gone

I'll never retrieve it

From the hands of time

But what's left is mine

Mine and no-one else's

To spend how I choose

Sickness or health

Love or loneliness

Creativity or boredom

Peace or despair

I am the scribe of my destiny

The only one who holds the pen

And I can choose to live

My dreams or my nightmares

Hmm, I think I choose dreams

Those ocean eyes gazed

And I, snared like a rabbit

Tumbled for him

- -

Sluggish thoughts

Anaesthetised by fatigue

And aches in my limbs

As I sit and wonder

Where are they?

Those bright sparks of inspiration?

Where have they gone?

All is dull and muted

Empty and worn

The world turns slowly

And I stay still

Paralysed by lack

Lack of ideas

Lack of motivation

Lack of spark

Lack of self-belief

I sip my tea

And stare at the blank page

It stares back - blankly

White and mocking

So instead, I clean the car

I fold my clothes

I brush the snarls from my hair

I gaze out the window

I breathe and listen

Bird calls, the whisper of breeze

The whine of the washing machine

A dog barking in the distance

My eyes follow the delicate wings

Of an orange butterfly

As it flits through the garden

Then alights on a pink flower

Ants are march across bricks

A hornet hovers near the window

Clouds drift lazily in the blue sky

All oblivious to my lack

And as the tiny dramas play out

Under the warm caress of the sun

Of life and death and survival

I imagine living among them

In the soft dirt of the anthill

Or the hexagons of the wasp's next

Under a shady leaf

Or up, up in the restless sky

That which I might tread on

In a careless moment

Is their whole world

And everything that's dear

And the tiny becomes magnificent

And all important

And as it does, my lack retreats

When compared to the majesty of life

That recipe I make

Slow-cooked lamb roast

Infused with lemon and garlic

Splashed lavishly with olive oil,

I kept that when I broke up

With the dark-haired man

With deep-brown eyes

His love of Korean cinema lingered

Long after he was gone

And I'll never eat Romano

And not think of him

Sometimes fondly

Sometimes with a deep pain

He left many imprints on my life

From my French sailor

Who forever made me see

The romance in a sunset

Sometimes I hum that song

The one he used to sing to me

When everything was closing in

And I found it hard to breathe

Every bike ride or playground

Reminds me of that summer

Where we frolicked

Hands intertwined

In the heady, fragrant breeze

Eyes only for each other

He's in every sunset now

I can't eat donuts

Without remembering

Those ones I ate in Berlin

In the freezing winter wind

With my German lover

His coat wrapped around me

As he kissed the sugar from my face

And when I walk in cemeteries

I think of when we strolled

Hand-in-hand through that place

Sombre and yet beautiful

The autumn leaves swirling

On the hibernating ground

I see him still betwixt the headstones

They shaped me with their taste

Their passion, their dislikes

And though these men are gone

Their impression here remains

And oft I ponder to myself

What habits linger still

That they have kept from me

Life had been bumbling along for a while. The pandemic had settled like a heavy blanket on our already insular lives, snatching any rare moments of spontaneity, dampening the wick of creativity, freezing off the tender shoots of joy. Life had become a relentless routine - work, grocery shops, food, TV and video games. There were no alternatives to the choices - we were mandated by the government to stay inside - on pain of a large fine.

I'm not sure when the numbness started to creep in, but I think it predated even the pandemic. I started crying in the shower. And when I took long walks on my own. I teared up in the moments in between, when I didn't think anyone was looking. I shied away from the screaming pain and buried it beneath more cheerful thoughts. Perhaps that's when the numbness started.

Two years into the pandemic I was a woman sleep-walking through her life. One mask for the outside world to prevent the spread of the virus, another for at home, to prevent another argument that I didn't have the energy to fight. I pretended everything was OK, I did it so much, that sometimes I even believed it.

But I was lonely. Lonely at home with my partner, lonely in the room full of people at work, lonely on the bus and in the shower. I felt like a startled turtle, who had retreated into it's shell after a shock. As hid the pain away, my ability to feel joy winked out. My smile disappeared, not just behind my mask, but from my eyes too. I walked the heavy tread of the condemned.

The first slap came from work. The place I was the happiest, if I was happy at all. That was where I had meaning, where I had the ability to impact the world in some positive way. I poured myself into that job as if I were a bottomless jug of water, slaking the thirst of a group of camel riders who had crossed the desert and become lost.

Only to discover I was worth less to my company than a younger male colleague who did exactly the same job as me. My sanctuary, my safe place, held the first dagger. They twisted the knife when they refused to give me equal pay, driving home just how unvalued I was. Oh how it stung. But if they had treated me just a little better I might have stayed.

The second slap was the implosion of my relationship. I thought I'd found my person, that I was done with the indignity of dating. But something had broken long before and as the years drifted by, I felt more and more at sea. I tried everything to make it work. I had been taught as a child never to give up on a difficult man. I had bent and bent until I broke and still it wasn't enough. Everything was my fault and my responsibility. I was asking for too much. If he been a little kinder, I'd probably still be with him.

The final straw that shattered the illusion completely, came from my landlords. Greedy as they were, they raised the rent by 31% in one hit - far beyond what I could afford. If they had been a little fairer - I'd still be living there.

I thank them for their callousness and cruelty - for I thought so little of myself back then, that I needed that level of contempt, to finally realise I wanted more for myself than the scraps. My life fell apart in a spectacular way - but that was the first steps to it falling into place.

She gave him her smile. And her youth. And her joy. He feasted on it all, then demanded more. But she was spent. Used up. Exhausted. Still he supped on her life-force, until, with her dying breath, she cast him out. Weakly she stumbled away, her faint heart-beat barely a flutter. But outside his shadow was warmth. And smiles. And youth. And joy. The frost around her heart was hard and cold. But slowly it melted away. Each kind word. Each soft gaze. Each peel of laughter. Until she grew a new smile. Different, sometimes sad, but just as beautiful.