<h1 style="color:#CC6600;">2024, a personal review</h1>

After 3 really very difficult years, I finally had a perfectly adequate year, tending to good. There’s quite a lot to write about really, so I’ll try and keep it concise.

Last year I wrote about object permanence, and my realisation that for me this applies to relationships, friendships and feelings – I forget they exist until something reminds me. That’s why the isolation of the pandemic had made me lose my mind: the reminder / triggers of who I was that I used to get each day had vanished, and I had entered a state of chronic oddness and confusion, which is how I started 2024.

To give an example from this year: I bought some box files to put my medical notes in. It would have been nice to put the notes in the files the same day as I was gearing up to move house so that’s one thing less to do. I left the boxes in the car and of course totally forgot that they even existed. It’s a trivial example, but when you end up not doing thing you could have, that you then have to do another time, it becomes less trivial. It’s similar with plans: there’s always lots going on in Devon but I forget what the options are. I end up writing loads of stuff in my calendar so I can see what it is that happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays etc. Then when it gets to that day, because it’s just a written note and possibly something I’ve not been to before, I can’t remember my emotional attachment to it, so I think it’s not really relevant for me and I don’t go. On the odd time I might make it out, it’s invariably fun and fabulous and I feel like I need to make it into a routine. Trouble is I’m back to square one the week later as I’ve forgotten the attachment again.

Fundamentally I felt so confused and conflicted, every day. Should I relax into the new calmer norm, or should I fight to get my life back? I didn’t know the answers as I don’t think like that. I couldn’t see an answer, it had been so long since life made sense. If you asked me my future plans I could answer, but I couldn’t feel that answer to mean anything or be real; object permanence again. I had a friendship group but it didn’t have a presence in any standard day. I’d write a to do list helps get through the day, but it doesn’t do anything about the lost and confused feeling.

However, at least I knew what was happening now, I knew about the object permanence problem. I’d forgotten what a world feels like where people say ‘yes’ to the question ‘are you okay’ (not that I approve of that question anyway). But somehow I started to absorb some okay-ness into me, and feel stronger and more capable. I was also able to exercise again. Last year I talked about my DVT: that didn’t go, it became chronic so I had restricted blood flow in my left leg. There was no more care for it through the medical system, if it’s not an immediate threat to life they don’t continue to treat it, regardless of quality of life (although I am still pushing for that). But, I had got my fitness back if not my life. So I filled up the calendar so that whatever else it wasn’t another write-off like last year (the first 4 months of the year had already absolutely flown by, so couldn’t let it all do that).

I managed the following wonderful activities:

• A little stretch of the South Wales coast path, 10th & 11th Feb.
• A trip to Malta, 9-16 March (at least to tick my ‘1 new country per year’)
• Head of the Dart, a paddleboard event / race, 13km down the river Dart, on 20th April
• SUP Tidal awareness course, 22nd & 23rd April
• Half OceanMan (5k) swim, in the Costa Azahar in Spain.
• A 7km guided swim down the Menai strait on 25th May. This was really epic, with the strong currents and eddies. Followed by some of the Anglesey coast path.
• I entered the Gwineas swim 22nd June but this was cancelled due to bad weather.
• A photoshoot for Zone3 at a quarry on the moor on 21st June.

• A trip to Shetland 9-17 July, although that was a bit of a false start as I sprained my foot on the way there and I was in a lot of pain the whole trip.
• The Great Big Paddle Parade on 1st Sept, 19km round Torbay. This was sort of my longest paddle yet, but we paused at Goodrington as we were ahead of schedule.
• A wonderful week in Scotland 20-28 September, tackling a series of big and non-standard mountain routes on my own.
• A guided swim down the Yealm on 11th September. Video evidence.
• A White Water SUP 1 day course on the Dart on 13th October.

I arrived at each event with massive brain fog, unable to visualise what I was about to do and without the presence of mind to know whether I really wanted to be there, but for each one I did the event anyway, and it was a bit like ‘if you hit it enough times the nail will eventually go in’… ‘if I do enough of this, eventually maybe I’ll remember what life is’.

I also tried to improve my running while I was grounded, as I wanted to fix my weird gait which meant starting from scratch anyway, so what better time. However I found it very hard to see that through, due to my brain state and its executive dysfunction and a lack of support from the physiologist I chose to see. I persisted for quite some time but eventually I succumbed to my own brain.

Spraining my foot in July put paid to running for a while anyway. I was able to do bits, including an enjoyable 15.65 mile social run in November, but my foot was still niggling my brain as it wasn’t healing and I couldn’t rehab it without it clicking and popping. I went through the NHS system, getting an x-ray then seeing a physio in order to get an MRI, and on 20th December I found out it was broken, not sprained. I’ve got a 10mm marrow edema of the talar dome (a bone bruise/lesion), and some thickening and micro tears of the ATFL ligament. This means no running or dancing for a minimum of 8 weeks, and it could be several months before it recovers. So that’s two summers in a row wiped out by an unknown medical issue! But this time I got a lot done regardless.

There were some big life events too:

I finally bought a house in Devon in July, a nice end terrace in Paignton with two floors split over 4 levels and a decent sized garden. Having worked to save up the deposit I had been struggling to decide where to buy, as although I love the moor and the coast, none of the towns were right for me. The only place I liked was Exmouth and that was the wrong side of the Exe. I finally settled on Paignton as the only place left after I’d eliminated the rest, which proved to be a much better choice than I expected – it’s big enough that there’s a buzz of people, a cinema, and a fair amount to explore (pic = Crystam Cove), but small enough I can walk everywhere should I wish. I can see the sea from half way down the road, and I can order takeaways.

What I hadn’t realised is how much of a MASSIVE difference it would make to hear LIFE again – I can hear delivery drivers, children walking up the street to the school (there were lots of trick-or-treaters at Hallowe’en), music from people working in the garden, the toot of the steam train (and some very noisy seagulls). I hadn’t realised how isolated I’d been in Ashburton, maybe I was oblivious as the house was so gorgeous and my housemates so lovely. I’d fixed the isolation I was suffering at work, but missed the contribution that came from not hearing life around me at home, and as soon as I moved it’s like a switch was flicked – I felt okay again in no time. My brain started functioning again. I no longer had to try to battle the object permanence issues (as all of the triggers created by the presence of other people were back) or monitor my mental health, the issues of the last 3 years had finally lifted! I can’t tell you what a relief that was.

It’s the first time I’ve ever lived on my own, but I don’t feel alone at all. Although I might have descended into an unregulated obsession of measuring things and counting things, but I couldn’t say for sure, it’s so automatic I don’t notice!

My dad died in September, and his twin sister (my aunt and godmother) died 3 months later. My dad had been ill for a while with a terminal lung disease and I would go and visit for a week every few months and take my work with me so I wasn’t using up all my leave. In the evenings I had been able to have conversations with him over a whisky and a jigsaw, so I had already made my peace with his passing before he went. I went on holiday to Scotland after spending some time with family after he died, and I while there I realised that because I have lived 2-3 hours away from him since I was 18, he’s always with me anyway, in my brain because we're not together in person. If anything, when he died I felt like he was even closer.

I tried to have a baby. I've been desperate for this for 10 years, but seem destined to be forever single. Last year when I turned a little corner with my mental health, the biggest thing that helped was taking hold of my destiny and deciding I would try to be a single mum using a donor (which is why I was in such a rush to buy a house). Time had run out to meet someone (which is why I had been holding off on the house purchase before that). I had never wanted to do it on my own, but when the biological clock says it’s the last chance, you’re able to decide more easily (and I had a silly lightbulb moment that just by choosing to have a baby on my won’t didn’t necessarily mean I would have to stay single, that had never ‘clicked’ for me before). I threw money at 3 rounds of IUI in October, November and December (consecutive rounds have a slightly higher chance of success, and I promised myself I would do all this before my 45th birthday in February), but sadly it was not to be, none of them were successful. For those interested in the cost, it was a total of £6,500 (breaking down into: £2,805 IUI, £3,627 for 3 straws of sperm, £35 for a trigger injection, £60 for 6 packs of LH tests, £7 for pregnancy tests) – and that’s the cheaper option, compared to IVF!

Achievements:

As well as the sporting activities above, I managed to achieve progress on my many tick lists, which I’ll summarise here. Please note that by writing these I’m not trying to compare myself to anybody else, and nobody should compare any of this to themselves or let it affect how you feel about yourself. I find ticklists soothing so for me this is a comfort blanket, it’s not a competitive thing.

• 127 hill summits, of which 120 were new. 64 of the new ones were only TUMPs (30m prominence, no minimum heights). Some were fairly significant - from 2 trips to Scotland, 1 to the Lakes and a few County Tops. I have 24 Munro Tops remaining and 21 Historic County Tops remaining. My Devon-only TUMP bagging habit expanded to nationwide, when I imported my list onto the hill-bagging website in June, which opened up a whole load of regional stats (number of counties ‘completed’ for a particular specification of hill height etc.) and league tables.
• 18 new Dartmoor 365 squares, which isn’t that many but I only have 41 left then I can crack on with the Tors.
• Walked 449 miles, ran 400 miles (of which 216 was trail), hiked 221 miles, cycled 13 miles, swam 61.5km, paddleboarded 69 miles. My longest single run (with a broken foot!) was 15.65 miles.
• 40 New Trigs
• 46 New Dartmoor Tors

• I got three good heatmaps swims in with Selene. We did an early one from Meadfoot to Hope Nose (by mistake, had to change to a one way swim as couldn’t do an out and back due to the currents) in March. Watcombe to Babbacombe on 6th May. Maidencombe to Ness on 18th May with kayak support from Ron. I remain amazed that these coastline swims are possible for us, and make sure to not take them for granted. Swimming is sadly not free from impact from the DVT, my calf cramps up, but it’s manageable.

So as you can see, if you’re still with me, it was an eventful year, and by the end of it I was happy with my life again, and with where I’m at. This is the first time that I’ve been in a good place since I moved to Devon 6 years ago, so a lot of my good memories are still attached to other places and it’s still nice to go on trips away, but I’m winning the battle now and as I make new good memories in Devon it will solidify all the good things that I’ve managed to squeeze in amongst the bad over these last 6 years. I’ve always loved it here, so it’s fabulous to finally iron out the creases.