The haunting of Winter Woods ‘2023’

Here we are, once again. A year end review with a rather ominous title. One which I feel is truly fitting as this is a tale bathed in darkness but worry not as it does end in the light.

I don’t want to dig up the dead and that is exactly what I would be doing if I were to give any breath to the events of ‘last December’. We all know what happened and we all know no good comes from re living horrors we have tried to run from. However, it is where this tale must start. I did hope to run, to vigorously put one foot in front of the other at a marathon pace and put some distance between myself and ‘last December’. But the truth is that no matter how fast I propelled myself, regardless of distance travelled and obstacles thrown down to slow my pursuer; the events of ‘last December’ haunted me so thoroughly I almost let them win the race.

My mental health has always been a battle within myself. A constant fight between the raging seas of instability. Most of the time I can stay in my little boat and calmly bob along in the swells. The other times which are thankfully not very frequent, when the swells rage a little too high and a tad more violent… I struggle to stay afloat. I’m very open and honest about my mental health as i’ve seen it in real life, full frontal exposure to the tragedy of drowning within one’s own mind. The devastating cost of hiding the storm from outside viewers. It’s something I know. It is something that shaped me. So no, I will talk about it honestly and openly because with showing that part of yourself there is a better chance of a lifeboat finding you should someone see your flares. Life is beautiful, it is also bleak. I’ve always been a visionary when it comes to this duality, as you can’t truly appreciate the beauty without also seeing the gruesome. Love wouldn’t be as wonderous if there wasn’t the occasional heartbreak. The sunrise is only a glorious spectacle due to the night slinking away to reveal the sun. And a truly great day is only great in the knowledge that the bad ones exist. A sad story needs to exist, if they didn’t we wouldn’t appreciate all of the happiness we are due to find.

I should have expected it really. The delayed response. It began early in the year, slowly leaking into my boat a raindrop at a time. Before long I had sprung a leak and I had no idea how to plug it. Overflowing, all encompassing and by spring time, drowning. I should have realised what was happening but I was so caught up in a myriad of simultaneous stressors that I had no mental bandwidth left to say to someone, i’m truly not okay here. I lept headfirst into a very toxic situation with someone who couldn’t be trusted to handle me with care. I threw my arms up and quit my beloved profession because I couldn’t escape what I was running from. I allowed myself to sink and I didn’t once say to anyone, i’m not okay. As the water kept coming and with no flares to be found, it was around the late springtime I hit the bottom. I very truly thought I was gone. Lost. Never to resurface. It was the bleakest moment of my entire existence. During the nights I would go to bed, lay down my head upon the pillow and whisper words into the darkness; pleading with whomever could hear me that if I could just ‘not wake up again, please’. Night after night went the same way. I would plead and beg into the shadows for the life to just leave me of my own volition. If I could will myself away in my slumber to whatever awaits the ghosts we shall all become. I was completely frozen, haunted by my memories. Haunted by people and places, scents and tastes. Haunted so completely, I felt seconds away from death itself. One day in the early summertime I found myself alone with my ghosts one afternoon. They were suffocatingly loud. Coldness creeped through my skin as the day went on and on, my feet burning to run. Run away, run far far away from the menacing memories that just wouldn’t stop. I could make them stop. I tried to make them stop. I very nearly made them stop. If someone hadn’t have seen my accidental flare I triggered one fateful evening in early summer, I fear that I very much would have succeeded. It was a moment that changed everything for me. It woke me up. It made me see for the first time since ‘last December’ just how deeply affected I was and I took steps to save myself, I learnt to swim and got a bigger and better boat with a guide along for the ride.

The first half of 2023 was a tale of survival. It was brutal, it was bleak and it was hauntingly horrible. But it is only half the story.

When I came back to the world in the late summer I was brand new in a sense. I looked different, my life was very different and I also knew far more about myself than I had ever known. I was in a sense a fully formed butterfly fresh out of transition and ready to flutter my wings back out in the gardens of life and love. Promising myself that this time, this chance, this second life as Winter Woods I would let myself live as authentically as possible. I won’t shy away from who I am anymore. Let’s talk about the realities of living but also show who we are because people are so individually brilliant. All the nuance and difference is what makes being human so, captivating. I’m an alt gothic beauty with a few obscure hobbies and interests. A fascination with the opposite sex and a desire to explore as many men as I can, to thoroughly deduce just why I find them so enticing. This is who I am and I shall be this unapologetically from this point forward. I have days where I struggle. I am haunted by things there won’t ever be an escape from. But I know now what to do when the ghosts come back, fully equipped to handle their bullshit and make sure that what happened to me this year does not happen again.

The last six months of 2023 have been a true joy. The happiness that highlights the sadness to give a true appreciation of the story. Without the sadness the happy days just wouldn’t hit the same. I’ve met some extraordinary people in the latter half of 2023. So many stories, so many lives lived and so much laughter my cheeks have hurt from the pure frivolity. I’ve been blessed to see the beauty again and found my peace. It is a gift that I won’t take for granted. To be seen, heard and brought along for the adventure by so many is a blessed chapter in the book of Winter. What would this chapter be called? If this year where a book it would indeed be ‘The Haunting of Winter Woods’. And much like all great ghost stories, it’s conclusion is very much within the land of the living. Breathing in that clean air, washing away the past and bursting with the gentle strumming of a beating heart. ‘Alive, again’. The final chapter of a year so full yet so deprived of heart.

Stability is a funny thing. It can be there one minute and gone the next. How does one keep stability? Is there a way to super glue it to yourself so you never lose it again? If you know the answer to that please do let me know because I would like to avoid losing it again, especially as I currently have it in my possession. It’s like Peter Pan’s shadow really. It occasionally runs off. Be a bit boring if it didn’t though wouldn’t it, Just don’t tell the captain I said that.

In all seriousness I would like to end this yearly review by saying that as much as It sounds so cliche, things do get better. With the right help and action the place you find yourself in, isn’t forever. Life is life, if it was easy we wouldn’t write so many damn books about it. Highs, lows and everything in between. It’s so disgustingly human. 2023 is a year I will never forget, but one I truly want to. It’s demons and it’s heroes. It changed me, in the best of ways. My monsters created something when they broke the old me. What I became is happier, healthier, vision clear and working towards things that I wasn’t brave enough to reach for before. I have aspirations. I have so much love in my heart and can’t wait to pick up that next book, break the spine and start writing the next one. 2024. What will it be? Where will we go? What memories will we leave behind in it’s pages? Right now it is waiting patiently to be written with all the hope a new year brings. On the wings of whispers into the night we shall find it and with your hand in mine anything is possible.

Let’s go find out what living feels like, together. I do have some time to make up for.

All my love,

Winter Woods x