The highlander - and the yard that broke me

The Weight of Wales;

I was at the Highlander in Scotland, representing Wales as team captain at the Four Nations Backyard Ultra. Ten runners per nation. Ten individuals running for their country, surrounded by a crowd of enthusiastic athletes, all stepping up to that start line every hour, on the hour.

I’d spent the past six months pulling Team Wales together from what began as a situation where we didn’t even have a team to stand on that start line. I’d agreed to build a team, and with every runner I brought on board, it felt like we were piecing ourselves together, one commitment, one conversation, one shared belief at a time.

At times, it felt like I carried all of it: the pressure, the pride, the responsibility, the expectation. All self-inflicted. All fed by that constant whisper of doubt - am I actually capable of doing this? 

I kept reminding myself that I didn’t need to be the best runner to be team captain; I just needed to bring out the best in my teammates.

But when the moment came, when I stood on that start line as the highest-yarding Welsh runner to date, a title that felt heavier than I expected, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Wales was resting squarely on my shoulders. More than anything, I didn’t want to let anyone down.

And by the time I reached Yard 31… my body wasn’t backing me the way it normally does. It was fighting me instead of carrying me, and the cracks were starting to show.

Not tiny cracks. Not little hints of tiredness. But deep ones that ran right through me, physically, mentally, emotionally.

I could feel something inside me slipping: a dizziness behind my eyes, a heaviness in my limbs that didn’t feel like normal fatigue, a wobble in my balance, a tremor in my hands. A dread in my gut whispered: something doesn’t feel right.

By then, I wasn’t moving forward on grit or determination anymore. I was running on denial. On duty. On the desperate belief that I had to keep going, because stopping felt like failing my entire team.

But the truth was… my body had already started to unravel.

And Yard 31 was just the beginning of the storm that was about to hit.

Fragments of a Yard;

I ran this yard with Liam, or more accurately, he ran it with me. He stayed at my side the entire time. He wouldn’t leave me, not for a second. He could see how fragile I was, how close I was to going down, and he kept talking to me, keeping me focused, grounding me, almost verbally holding me upright.

Every few steps my body lurched, trembled. I was nauseous, weak, shaking, like something deep inside me was shutting down one piece at a time. Everything felt wrong. I was right on the edge.

I kept stopping to heave, trying to throw up the nothing I had left in me. I was running on empty, fighting my own failing body.

It’ll pass, I kept telling myself. It always passes.

I had the experience to know that tough yards come and go. If you grit your teeth and hang on long enough, the storm usually moves through you. That was all I needed to do: get through it.

Just get through this yard.

Just survive this one hour.

I stumbled over the finish line and into the tent like someone who’d left half their body outside. The noise of everything, people talking, the shuffle of movement, the rustle of kit, all of it felt distant, muffled, like I was hearing it from underwater.

My dad looked up immediately. He always noticed the smallest shift in me, and whatever was happening right then… it wasn’t small.

“I can’t go on,” I said. Or maybe I whispered it. I’m not even sure the words came out properly. They felt foreign in my mouth, admitting defeat, speaking words I’d told myself I wasn’t allowed to say. My legs were shaking, not from the miles, but from something deeper, something wrong, something I couldn’t name.

Dad moved toward me, fuel pouch already in his hand. I couldn’t even imagine putting it to my mouth, couldn’t imagine getting it down. Then water. Then comfort. All delivered fast, instinctive, automatic.

“We’ll get you sorted,” he said. Quiet. Steady. And he meant it. Tough yards pass. We both know that. For him, getting me back to that start line was the mission.

But then came the moment of total vulnerability, that look I gave him, the silent question, the plea for permission: please… let me stop.

We had a pact. No matter how horrific a yard felt, I would at least stand on that start line again. Just stand there. Just show up. And my dad reminded me, gently but firmly, of that promise.

So I got up. Legs trembling, vision swimming, tears running down my face without me even realising they were falling. I walked to the start line because that’s what we do.

That’s how we face hard things.

We show up.

The Quiet Between Steps;

But as soon as the whistle blew and I took those first steps, I was hit with a crushing wave of uncertainty. Completely overwhelming. What do I do? Stop right there, turn back to the tent, admit that I’m done? Or push forward, risk injury, risk breaking myself, risk the unknown that already felt like it was swallowing me whole?

Every step felt like choosing between two versions of myself. One that wanted safety. One that wanted to honour the promise. Both terrified. Both exhausted. Both screaming for different reasons.

And in that chaos, in that disorienting, split-second moment, I kept moving. Not because I knew it was the right choice. Not because I felt strong. But because momentum was the only thing I had left.

I moved through that first mile in fragments, corner to corner, marshal to marshal, runner to runner. Tiny visual targets. Little lifelines. It was the only way I could keep moving forward.

I couldn’t take in the whole loop; it was too big, too overwhelming. So I broke it down into small, desperate steps of survival.

Other runners spoke to me as they passed. Encouraging words, grounding words… I don’t remember the specifics. Their voices blurred into the same fog everything else had become. All I remember is hearing myself mutter that I was going to walk this one out, almost apologising, almost begging people not to hang back for me, not to slow their own race for my sake. I didn’t want to be a burden. I didn’t want my bad yard to pull anyone off their rhythm.

I watched them disappear ahead of me, one by one, their backs shrinking, merging into the trail. And that sight… it hit something deep. I gave myself a little head wobble, a tiny, desperate attempt to snap myself back into reality, to pull myself together even though everything inside me was coming undone.

So I picked up the pace. Not much, but enough. I visually locked onto one runner ahead. just one, and kept them in my sights. For safety. For comfort. For the reassurance that I wasn’t out there alone in the dark spiral I was slipping into.

That single, blurry silhouette became my tether. The thing keeping me upright, keeping me moving forward, even as the rest of me felt like it was slowly shutting down.

I imagined running poles in my hands. Not real ones, but solid, grounding poles in my mind. I could feel them planting firmly into the ground, one after the other, giving me leverage, holding me up, pushing me forward. My arms mimicked the rhythm, planting and pulling, planting and pulling, each motion a tiny anchor against the chaos inside me.

Step by step, push by push, those imagined poles became my structure, my support, the thing that let me keep moving when my legs and body didn’t want to.

But then the pole slipped. Or maybe I imagined it slipping, I can’t be sure anymore. Suddenly it pushed me backwards, my leg buckled, and I stumbled, fighting not to fall.

For a second, the world tilted in that familiar, sickening way. Had my own mind betrayed me? Had a pole I’d created in my head really just thrown me off balance?

I questioned everything, my sanity, my reality. The boundary between what was real and what I was imagining dissolved in an instant.

How tired had I become? I wasn’t anywhere near my Backyard Ultra PB, not even close, and yet my body felt like it was right on the edge of breaking. Two yards ago I’d felt strong, steady, in control. And now… now I was hanging on by a thread.

Me and my imaginary pole, struggling up a hill I’d strolled up countless times over the last twenty-something hours. Every step felt heavy, like the ground had turned to lead, and yet I knew I’d conquered this same slope without thinking just hours ago. The irony wasn’t lost on me: here I was, weighed down by exhaustion and disbelief, leaning on a pole that didn’t even exist, trying to haul myself up a hill my body once treated like a warm-up.

And then it hit me.

Something deep inside snapped. A strange, terrifying sensation I had never felt before.

A prickling surge shot from my spine up into my skull, a warning my instincts understood faster than my mind could: something was very, very wrong.

Panic hit instantly, vivid, violent, consuming. Every fatal, life-ending story I’d ever heard about runners, the collapses, the cardiac failures, the freak moments, they all flashed through my head in one sickening rush. And at the end of it, one thought landed with absolute, icy certainty:

"You’re having a stroke. You are totally, utterly having a stroke!"

My hands were shaking so violently I could barely get into my pocket, fumbling for my phone as I tried to hold myself together long enough to call for help.

Somehow, I managed to ring Stu. He was in the Four Nations tent, looking after Team Wales.

The rules of a Backyard Ultra are clear: you cannot have assistance while on the yard. Take assistance, and you’re disqualified.

And as I reached for my phone, those words, those rules, rushed through my head like a punch to the stomach. It made me feel sick. Every fibre of me screamed not to call. Every instinct told me to stay upright, keep moving, push through.

But another part of me, the part that was trembling, unsteady, fading fast, knew it wasn’t safe to fight this alone.

I could barely get the words out. My voice felt disconnected from me, like it was coming from somewhere far away.

“Stu… something’s not right. I don’t feel okay.”

I remember the immediate shift in his tone, that seriousness, that focus. He knew. He heard it. He felt something in my voice I couldn’t articulate.

He told me to slow down, to breathe, to keep talking to him. But my body wasn’t listening anymore. My thoughts were slipping like sand through my fingers. The trail beneath me started tilting, even though I knew it wasn’t moving.

I was trying, God, I was trying, to hold on, to stay upright, to make sense of what was happening. But the grip I had on myself loosened with every step.

That was the moment I knew I wasn’t battling a bad yard. I was battling something I couldn’t fight with grit or willpower. And that terrified me more than anything.

Stu kept talking, his voice trying to anchor me to something real, something solid. But the world around me was already slipping. Every step felt wrong, delayed, disconnected, like my brain was sending signals my body couldn’t receive fast enough.

I tried to focus on the ground beneath me. One foot. Then the other. But even that felt impossible.

Then the real fear hit. Not race fear. Not exhaustion fear. The kind that grips your chest and scatters your thoughts.

My legs buckled first. Strength was sucked straight out of them. I grabbed at nothing, trying to catch myself, but my body wasn’t responding. I remember falling sideways, shoulder hitting something hard, the ground? a slope? a wall? Everything fragmented, like snapshots that didn’t belong to the same moment.

Through it all, I could hear Stu’s voice, sharp, urgent now: “Tell me what’s going on. Speak to me, Vic.”

But the words weren’t forming in my mouth anymore. My tongue felt thick, clumsy, like it belonged to someone else. My thoughts were trying to reach him, but they were trapped behind fog and static, unable to break through.

The world tilted again, a slow, sickening roll, and then everything inside me seized. The movement hit so violently it felt like it ripped through every muscle at once, a full‑body surge I had no control over. My limbs jerked, my back arched, pain firing up my spine. And even though I was conscious, I was powerless. Locked inside my own body.

At some point, I don’t know when, or how long I’d been drifting in and out, I heard his voice again. Not the calm, grounded tone I knew. This time it was raised, sharp with concern, cutting through the thumping in my ears and the chaos rattling around my skull.

“If you need me, tell me… and I’ll be there.”

We both knew what that meant. If I asked, it was over. Yard done. Race done. No coming back.

But I wasn’t thinking about the race anymore. Not about yards, not about pride, not about holding on for the team.

I was thinking: I’m not okay. I’m not safe. I need help.

“I need you,” I said. Or whispered. Or mouthed half of it. I’m not even sure. But he heard enough.

“I’m coming,” he replied.

Relief hit me so sharply it triggered another attack, harder this time. My body shook violently, my head snapping back, my vision flashing white for a second like someone had opened a door to nothingness.

In my mind, I could hear Stu crashing through the trees toward me, shouting my name, fighting his way to where I was.

But in reality, the world was silent. Completely silent.

I was alone. Far from camp. Not within sight or earshot of another runner. Nowhere near the safety I suddenly, desperately needed.

Then, through the crackle of the phone I didn’t even realise I was still clenching in my useless, trembling hands, his voice cut through:

“I can see you!”

Those were the last words that reached me.

Because in the very next breath, everything inside me broke at once. My legs collapsed. My body folded in on itself like it had given up ownership of me. The world smeared into noise, into light, into a rushing blur that wouldn’t stay still.

And then -

Nothing.

Just nothing.

A clean, terrifying absence where I should have been.

The Edge of Awareness;

I came back in pieces.

Not all at once, not cleanly, but in fragments. Sound arrived first. A low humming. A rushing. Voices that were somehow too close and too far at the same time, like they were trying to break through a wall I couldn’t see.

Then the cold.

Not the cold of the Scottish highlands, I knew that cold, but a deeper one, something internal, like part of me was still unplugged, like I hadn’t fully made it back.

My eyes opened, but nothing formed properly. Shapes. Movement. Shadows leaning over me. Light flashing in disjointed bursts. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know when I was. I didn’t even know if I was safe.

Someone said my name, or I think they did. It sounded like it came from underwater, muffled and warped. Hands were on me: shoulders, face, chest. Checking. Assessing. Trying to anchor me to a world I wasn’t convinced I’d returned to yet.

My body felt wrong. Heavy. Disconnected. Like it had been dropped from a height and only half put back together. My jaw throbbed. My spine pulsed with a deep, electric ache. My tongue felt thick, foreign in my mouth. And when I tried to speak, the sounds that came out didn’t match the thoughts in my head.

Slurred. Broken. Unfamiliar.

It was like learning my own voice from scratch.

Where was I? Who were these shapes moving around me, these busy bodies trying to reach out to me, touching me, checking me, talking in hurried voices I couldn’t understand?

Their faces were blurred, like someone had smeared them with their thumb, and every time I blinked, the world shifted sideways.

I had no memory of how I’d gotten there. No memory of being found. No memory of anything that had happened after the world went white.

Time had slipped through me completely. For all I knew, seconds or hours could have disappeared.

I was lying in the aftermath of something I couldn’t reconstruct, with no thread to pull, no moment to trace my way back to. Just blankness , a clean, terrifying gap where part of my life should have been.

My body didn’t feel like mine, heavy, trembling, full of static, like someone else had been using it while I was gone.

I tried to piece the moment together but my mind was full of holes. Everything I reached for, a thought, a memory, a sense of place, slipped straight through my fingers.

And worst of all… everyone around me seemed to know exactly what had happened.

Except me.

I felt someone reach for my hand, fingers brushing over my knuckles.

Warm. Familiar. Grounding.

I stared up at the face leaning over me for what felt like hours, trying to place it, trying to force the blurred outline into something that made sense. It was probably only seconds, but inside my head time had lost all meaning. Nothing had meaning. My thoughts were moving through fog that felt a hundred tons thick.

And then, like a switch being nudged back into place one millimetre at a time, my mind finally whispered:

That’s Seb. That’s safety.

But even in that tiny flicker of recognition, I saw it: the fear in his eyes. Not frantic. Not panicked. A quieter kind of fear, the kind people carry when they’re trying not to fall apart in front of you.

Stu was on my other side.

I didn’t even need to look. I could feel him there. I remember my body leaning slightly toward that direction without meaning to, drawn instinctively to the solidity of him, the one thing in that moment that didn’t feel threatening or strange or wrong. My mind was scrambled, but my body recognised safety long before my thoughts caught up.

Then the warmth hit me. Not comfort-warm, car-warm. Stale air, trapped breath, the close, boxed-in heat of a vehicle that had been running too long.

We were in the back of the medic’s car.

And as for the medic… my brain hated him instantly.

Not because of who he was, but because of what he represented. A medic hovering close, checking me, looking at me with that clinical concern, my system interpreted every bit of it as danger.

The fear didn’t start in my head. It started in my body. A full-system alarm.

My whole system reacted before I did. PTSD doesn’t wait for logic or reasoning; it just fires. And mine was firing on all cylinders.

Every time he moved. Every time he leaned in. Every time he spoke or reached out… my stomach clenched, my chest tightened, my throat closed, my skin prickled with panic.

I remember flinching, once, maybe more than once. Shaking my head with an absolute NO every time he dared approach I tried to make myself smaller, tucking inward even though I was barely conscious, as if shrinking might make him disappear.

The medic wasn’t doing anything wrong. But my brain couldn’t separate help from threat. Hospitals, doctors, medical environments… they’ve always ignited my anxiety, triggered attacks, dragged trauma up by the roots without warning.

I felt trapped in that car, caught between the fear of what had just happened and the fear of the person trying to help me.

And when the ambulance arrived, I refused to go to hospital.

Flat out. No hesitation.

The thought of stepping inside made my chest tighten and my stomach flip. Every instinct screamed danger. Every shadow of memory, cold waiting rooms, distant voices, hands that had once caused pain, moments of loss too heavy to name, set a tremble coursing through me.

My mind and body were no longer separate. My heart raced before I even thought about it. My hands trembled. My stomach clenched. My whole system had already decided: this was unsafe. Reasoning couldn’t override it. And in that moment, reasoning didn’t matter.

Stu tried to reason with me quietly, carefully, but even his calm voice couldn’t fully break through the panic.

He looked at me like he was holding something precious in his hands, aware it could shatter at any second, and all he could do was try to cushion the pieces.

Seeing that, it hit me with guilt. I knew I was scaring him, while simultaneously terrified of what he wanted me to do.

SOFT LANDINGS;

But when we arrived back at camp, a new wave hit me. Not panic, exactly, something quieter, sharper, more personal.

What if the team saw me like this?

Trembling, drained, fragmented. Not the captain they expected. Not the strong one they believed in.

I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with the physical collapse. My body had betrayed me, my mind had teetered on the edge, and now I was suddenly conscious of how visible every tremor, every weakness, every ragged breath was.

I wanted to disappear. To curl inward and make myself small, to hide the mess that had overtaken me. To shield them from the reality of how close I had come to breaking completely.

And yet… I was also painfully aware that hiding wasn’t possible. The team would see me anyway. The fear of being judged, or worse, of disappointing them, clawed at me alongside the fragile relief of being back on familiar ground.

And as I stepped out of the car, the tremors surged all at once. I don’t know if my knees buckled or if I simply crumpled. I don’t know if I hit the ground or if someone managed to catch me. Everything blurred into one sharp moment of losing control. All I know is that I went down, fast, helpless, completely undone.

When my eyes opened again, the world felt softer at the edges. Cushions were propped around me, blankets tucked beneath my shoulders, everything arranged with the kind of care people use when they’re afraid you might break again. The light seemed too bright, the air too still, and for a moment I hovered in that strange space between faint and awake, the foggy, weightless return to myself.

And then Maximus came barrelling toward me.

His heavy Labrador body thundered across the ground with zero hesitation, zero grace. Before I had a chance to steady myself, he slammed into me with all the force of his love — knocking my torso back down again, clumsy, joyful, completely unaware of his own weight. His huge, warm tongue found my face and hands instantly, lapping at me with an insistence that felt almost frantic, as if he’d been waiting for permission to pull me back into the world.

I tried to hold myself up, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. Max didn’t care. He pressed against me with his full Labrador bulk, tail thumping, breath hot and wet against my cheek. He was all warmth and weight and motion, grounding me with every sloppy nudge and determined lean.

His big, clumsy enthusiastic self made everything feel a little less frightening. His breathing, the familiar weight of him pressed against me, the determined way he shoved his head under my arm like he was saying “Oi, I’m here!” and  it steadied me more than anything else.

Each sloppy lick, each nudge, each wag of his tail pulled me a little further out of the fog. Not dramatically, not all at once, but in small, warm pieces. He didn’t care how shaken I was. To him, I was just me, and he was just happy I was back.

For the first time since everything had happened, something felt simple, safe, and honestly… a bit joyful. Max’s joy. Max’s certainty. Max’s completely unapologetic love.

And it brought me back to myself, one wobbly moment at a time.

Once I was in the van, my dad and Stu fussed around me in that quiet, purposeful way people do when they’re trying not to show how worried they are. I wasn’t sure if my dad fully knew what had happened. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. Everything felt blurry, out of order, like I was watching moments through frosted glass.

I have no memory of how I got changed, or how the mud was wiped from my skin, or how I ended up tucked under a warm duvet. One minute I was shivering and disoriented, and the next I was clean, warm, and cocooned in softness. It was as if care had been poured around me without asking anything in return, gentle, steady, practical. My body might have been in pieces, but they handled me like I was something that mattered.

I slept on and off, drifting in and out of something that felt almost like a recovery surge. My body seemed to reassure me that the worst was over. For stretches at a time, it was as though what had happened wasn’t real at all, distant, hazy, almost forgettable. Like my mind was already trying to tuck it away somewhere it couldn’t reach me.

THE WEIGHT OF GUILT;

At some point, I lifted my head to glance out the window. The tents were being taken down. Slowly, it hit me; the camp was quiet. Almost eerily so. The usual hum of people moving, talking, celebrating, or packing away gear had disappeared. Had the race finished?

A sudden wave of the old Vic coursed through my veins, that familiar surge of excitement, of wanting to know it all. Who had won? How had my remaining teammate done? The results, the victories, the stories that had been unfolding while I’d been tucked away in the van, I needed to know everything.

I waited eagerly for Stu to return to the van, my mind racing faster than I could form the words. In my head, I had expected to sound like the old Vic, fast, sharp, eager, brimming with energy and fire. But instead, when I finally spoke, the words came out quiet, feeble even, a tiny, urgent inquiry about the win, barely more than a whisper.

I can’t remember the exact words Stu carefully chose, but I remember the confusion that hit me like a wave. My brain couldn’t immediately grasp what he was saying. It took a few slow, careful explanations, each one simple, each one repeated until I could actually comprehend it, before I fully understood: the race had been stopped while I was still out on the course.

The disappointment hit me hard. Not for myself, exactly, but for those still out there, moving, pushing, giving their all, who had been stopped because my body hadn’t been able to do the same. Guilt surged through me, overwhelming and nauseating. I felt sick in my mouth, like I was carrying the weight of something I couldn’t fix, couldn’t take back. Every thought circled back to them, to what they had lost in that moment, and I hated that it had happened because of me.

My mind flicked through every movement I could remember, searching for something, anything, that might explain what happened. I kept replaying the loop in broken fragments, trying to pinpoint the exact second things had shifted, as if I could travel back and undo it. It was a pointless instinct, but it was the only one my brain seemed able to cling to: find the mistake, find the moment, fix it. Even though I knew I couldn’t change a single thing.

THE LONG ROAD HOME;

I couldn’t get away fast enough. At the first suggestion of traveling back, I wanted to leave immediately. I wanted to be taken away, out of sight, away from the judging eyes I was sure would blame, hate, and detest me.

The Scottish chill faded behind us, replaced by the hum of the van and the steady rhythm of the tires on the road. Stu drove with quiet focus, my dad beside me, and Max curled up in his bed, already half-asleep. The weight of what had happened clung to me, but at least we were moving forward, away from the chaos, toward something I could call safe.

I couldn’t stop the trembling entirely. My body still felt raw, every muscle keyed into survival. My mind was a jumble, flipping between disbelief, exhaustion, and relief.

I wanted words, movement, certainty, anything to make the world feel solid again.

I drifted in and out of half-sleep. Moments blurred together: the sound of the radio, Max nudging me, his wet nose on my neck, my dad’s soft snoring as he slept on the seat next to me, the occasional glance out the window at the passing landscape. Time stretched, elastic, neither urgent nor slow, just a long, tired trudge toward home.

We stopped for lunch at the services. Max bounded across the field, stretching his legs down a gentle slope while I followed, every step reminding me how spent my body was. A small lake came into view, calm and glimmering, and I didn’t hesitate. Shoes and socks came off, and I waded in.

Max followed immediately, shaking himself and splashing water over me, unbothered by the cold, unbothered by the weight of the weekend. I called to Papa, urging him down as well. It took some insistence, a little coaxing, but eventually he joined me.

We stood there, more than ankle-deep, letting the icy water flow over us. The chill cut through fatigue and fear, and for a moment, the pain and chaos of the weekend slipped away.

In that moment, I found a strange, quiet peace. Thoughts of Mum washed through my mind, her soft voice drifting like it had never left. Words I hadn’t heard in too long, words I ached for, brushed against me and stayed there, warm and fleeting. I wondered if she had some magic, homemade cream tucked away somewhere, the kind that could soothe my tired, broken soul.

Back at the van, coffee warmed our hands, chocolate offered a little comfort, and we sat in a loose circle, a small island of trust. I listened as Stu carefully explained to Papa what had happened.

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized the whole picture hadn’t been unfolded to my dad. Stu had waited, patiently, for my permission before sharing it all, respecting the control I still held over my own story.

Sitting there, the weight of everything, the collapse, the panic, the race, the drive, settled around us. It was both grounding and humbling, a reminder that even in the rawest moments, I wasn’t alone.

lost on the way home;

When the van finally pulled into the drive, I expected relief to hit me like a wave. I thought the tension, the panic, the weight of the weekend would all drain away the moment we crossed the threshold of home.

But I didn’t know where “home” was.

Somewhere between dropping my dad off and driving back toward our little corner of North Wales, the world had slipped sideways again. More than once I found myself staring out the window, struck with sudden confusion: Where am I? Where are we going? Where is home?

The roads, the fields, the bends in the landscape should have been familiar, but they blurred together in a way that made no sense. I asked Stu more than once, “Where are we?” hoping the question alone might anchor something in my mind.

He answered gently each time, but even then he tested my grasp on reality: “Do you recognise where you are? Do you know what town you live in?”

I hesitated, thought for a moment, and said, almost automatically, “London.” A home I hadn’t lived in since I was fourteen. The words sounded hollow even as I spoke them.

By the time we finally pulled into the drive, my body felt fragile, aching in places I hadn’t realised were sore. I stayed in the van for a moment, gathering myself, turning to Stu with a shaky voice: “I don’t recognise this. This isn’t my home.”

I tried to edge myself down from the van, legs trembling, yet eager to reach solid ground, to reconnect with the world, with home, with them.

I saw Sophie first, moving toward the doorway. But for a heartbeat, I didn’t recognise her. It wasn’t until she spoke, that warm, familiar sound of her voice, that everything clicked.

Her face… familiar, steady, grounding. My girl. My baby. My little spark of light, somehow almost as tall as me now, but twice as fierce. Not in body, but in spirit , n her quite stubbornness, her determination, her unwavering personality. She helped me into the house, her little arms wrapping around my weary body with a strength that felt far bigger than her size.

And then I heard the thudding footsteps, heavy yet quick, overflowing with excitement.

Olly. My son. My boy.

He came bounding toward me with that full-hearted enthusiasm only he has… and I didn’t recognise him. Not immediately, not even after several attempts.

I couldn’t recognise the shape of him. Couldn’t recognise his tone. Couldn’t connect the words he spoke to the person he was.

It was like looking at someone I should know, someone desperately important, but the thread between us had been cut. A hollow, disorienting disconnect that left me unsteady, fractured, struggling to reconnect.

I swayed slightly, trying to piece reality back together as he wrapped his arms around me.

Trying to find him again. Trying to find myself again.

Later, when I slipped into the bathroom, another shock waited for me.

I lifted my T‑shirt in front of the mirror and froze.

Bruises small, stone-sized, scattered down my back and along my sides. A deep, throbbing soreness in my neck I couldn’t explain. My body looked like it had been through something violent, something frightening… and I had no memory of any of it.

I didn’t know how I’d got them. I didn’t know why everything hurt. And that terrified me.

At some point, when the silence between us felt safe enough, I asked Stu.

He paused, choosing his words carefully, then told me the truth:

They found me fitting. Not once, multiple times.

Collapsed against the bridge. My back slumped against the stone wall. My body hitting the ground again and again as the seizures tore through me.

I stared at the bruises in the mirror, tracing them with unsteady fingers, searching for a memory to fit the marks my body remembered without me.

My own body had lived moments my memory couldn’t hold.

And somehow, that felt worse than the pain itself.

Fragments of Me

For the next few days, I slept a lot. I drifted in and out, surfacing only long enough to feel the world again. Every time my eyes cracked open, Dad was there, always there, sitting beside me with a quiet, steady presence that felt like safety itself.

But those moments were double-edged. When he leaned close, speaking softly, checking I was still with him, my mind betrayed me. It pulled me backward into memories I wasn’t ready to feel. Memories of him sitting beside Mum in her final months, comforting her, caring for her, waiting for any flicker of response, any small sign of connection.

Seeing him beside me now, in that same posture, that same soft patience… it cut through me. It landed on wounds that were already raw. It made me feel both held and haunted at once.

As the days passed, slowly, amidst the haze of confusion, the world around me began to reassert itself. The familiar curve of my son became apparent, grounding me in recognition. Bit by bit, the reality of what had happened settled into place.

I woke for longer stretches, my mind clearer, and began to hold more lucid conversations. The fog lifted in fragments, revealing the people, the space, and the life I had temporarily lost touch with. Acceptance crept in gently, a quiet acknowledgment that the events of the weekend had changed me, but hadn’t broken me entirely.

Then one morning, something in me felt… different. Not healed, not whole, but present. A piece of myself, fragile and flickering, had drifted back into place.

I pushed back the covers, legs stiff but willing, and made the careful journey downstairs. The house was quiet, that gentle, early-morning quiet where the world feels soft enough to try again.

I decided I would make a coffee. Something small. Something ordinary. Something me.

I reached for my favourite cup, the yellow Pokémon one, and placed it beside the kettle. Ceramic against countertop. A tiny ritual of normality.

My hands knew what to do. My body knew what to do. But my mind… didn’t.

I stood there staring at the kettle, at the cup, at the sachet of coffee just inches away, and the steps simply wouldn’t form. Boil water. Add coffee. Pour. Stir. Drink.

I knew all of this. I knew it. But I couldn’t translate the knowing into doing. It was like the link between thought and action had snapped.

And the reality of that hit me with a force I wasn’t ready for.

If I couldn’t make a coffee, something so small, so basic, so me, then who was I now?

How was I supposed to function in the world?

How could I be a mum if I couldn’t operate a kettle?

How could I work, run, manage, cope, do all the things that made up the scaffolding of my life?

How could I be worth anything if even the simplest ritual defeated me?

I stood in my own kitchen, surrounded by familiarity, and felt utterly lost.

Cracked open.

Hollowed out.

Reduced to a person who couldn’t complete a task she’d done ten thousand times before.

And it hurt.

It hurt in a way I can still feel now, because in that moment, I wasn’t grieving the coffee. I was grieving the version of myself I was terrified I might never get back.

In that small, quiet moment, something inside me cracked. Because if I couldn’t even make a coffee…how could I possibly believe I would ever be me again?