Daylight is good at coming at the right time

This time last year I was married. This time six months ago I was married. In a month's time I will be packing up my,vastly reduced, belongings and moving 350 miles. I will be leaving behind my, former, husband, my cats, most of my friends, a washing machine, hundreds of books, my job, and my ideas of what my life was going to be like. I'd held on to these ideas for a long old time, even though they were no longer fit for purpose. Like a much beloved jumper, I clung onto these ideas even though they were full of holes, the colour had long faded to washed out grey, and, frankly, they no longer even fitted, and made me feel sad, ugly and disappointed. The time for darning and repairs had long since passed.
  Many years ago I had a very wise friend. She told me that there are three main areas to life. Firstly there was the emotional stuff, friends, lovers, family, all the stuff you do with other people. Secondly, there is the work stuff, the stuff you do which brings in money, which enables you to buy shelter,food, nail polish, notebooks, and knickers. Finally, there is the stuff which happens inside your head, thoughts, ideas ,dreams, interests, all the stuff which you do for yourself, and which makes you happy and healthy. As she is a wise and practical woman my friend argued that most people don't have the good stuff going on in all three areas at the same time,and that the trick is to find balance, your job may be a bit dull, for example, but it allows you to travel , and your partner is kind, funny and supportive,and awesome at the sex ,and on balance your life makes you happy. Not me. I have this really vivid memory of lying awake at three in the morning about six months ago, listening to my husband, The Tweed Lord, snoring. I was trying to do the very silent, very still crying that I'd gotten so good at and had a moment of appalling clarity. I realised that I didn't love my husband, and that he didn't love me. We were together because we were frightened, and because I thought that this was what adults did. Even though I was taking a small pharmacy worth of mood stabilising drugs I was still pathetically unhappy, and stuck in an pre-adolescent state of self loathing and masochism. I had no self confidence, and was utterly incapable of deciding what I wanted for breakfast, let alone what I wanted to do with my life. I had no reason to believe that this would ever change.
This is the story of how things did change. It is the story of how I changed. It involves a large chunk of coincidence, a vast measure of good fortune, a fair dash of courage, and the town of Whitby, as shown in the photograph. It is the story of how I grew myself a life.