One more step along the world I go.

The church is celebrating Succot this week, the feast of tabernacles. In Israel the Jewish people build booths outside to pray in. We do our own version in my church and it went up this weekend.

I was blown away, how has it been a year? My life a year ago was different on every level. I was off meds, teaching in a school. Today I'm taking two lots of meds and I'm temping in an office doing market research.

What a year. I have spent 6 months fighting the worst spell of PTSD of my life, quit teaching, started a counselling course, had 1:1 and group therapy of my own, joined an employment agency and have a job interview tomorrow.

High points? Making some fabulous, life long friends on Twitter, who have become a family. A rich, diverse wonderful group of people who have held my hand, walked with me, cried with me, held me up and not let me fall. Going deeper in relationships at church and being free to just be me there. Going deeper with Jesus and falling more in love with Him every day. Finding my voice when the world would try to shut me up. Going on an amazing retreat in Pembrokeshire. 

Low points, all dealings with the Crisis Team, I'm sure that some are great, mine weren't. Being continually harassed and stalked by people who just want to see me hurt. Having to submit to the PTSD and have time off work. Lying in dark depression and fighting to leave the house with anxiety. Retreating back into the world of mental illness and coping strategies and suicidal thoughts. Losing a dear friend in childbirth. 

Regrets? Not quitting teaching sooner. It has become something ugly and dark, where numbers matter more than children and the only way to advance in your career is to not care who you walk over on your way forward, and I just can't reconcile that.

Regrets? Not telling a few people exactly what I think of them to their faces. Not telling them to get out of my life and stay out. Because their continued presence, interference and in two cases stalking behaviour is not something I am prepared to put up with. They think they know me and can control me. People have been doing that my whole life.

My life looks and feels so different this September to last, and to the previous one as well. I am content. I wouldn't say happy, not completely yet, but the sun is peeping out from behind the clouds and I am hoping that it will shine long and bright and hot. It may not be forever summer, but to have sunny spells seemed unthinkable even a few weeks ago.

And I know that no matter what happens, I am not alone. That means more than anything this year. I have grieved the people who rejected me two years. I'm not sad, angry. I actually don't feel anything about them, it's like they've ceased to exist in my head. Thanks for the memories but no part of this year belongs to you.

So, what will the coming year hold?!