Message in a Bottle

I’ve got a lot to be thankful for as of late, but I feel like I’m very little of the person I was.

I’m shedding my metaphorical skin at an alarming rate, such a rate, in fact, that it’s only just hit me. A couple of key things happened around September / October 2025. I entered new social spaces, spaces so far removed from where I’d previously been, but also ones that felt like I should’ve been there all along.

At the same time, I met a new friend, one that soon turned into two, and then eventually four in total. This new friendship group works very differently to my pre-existing friendships. Without throwing any offence at my oldest mates, this new group of lads has been present through my challenges in a way that feels unfamiliar but deeply supportive. We look out for each other. Feelings are discussed more openly. There’s a shared softness there.

I couldn’t ask for a better circle right now, old and new alike.

But change, even good change, has come with a cost. A cost that this tight fisted Yorkshireman will begrudgingly pay.

In this case, it’s arrived as a quiet kind of grief. Grief in the sense that I’m retaining very little of my initial post-separation self. And while this is a healthier, and in many ways, happier version of me, I can’t help but feel confusion and anxiety as I struggle to settle into this new identity.

Might be that this is just the cost of growth. Maybe skin isn’t meant to be permanent.

Right now, I’m trying to be patient with the in-between, even if it itches.