Thank you

This blog isn't really cycling related, so my apologies.
Cycling is a beautiful metaphor for life. And that's where it ends. Over the last month I was handed a bloody good lesson; that life (to quote myself) "is fleeting, harsh and nail-biting stuff with zero warranty".
Enough metaphors and literary devices. My daughter contracted a perfect storm pneumonia that landed her and ourselves in the hospital. And it got better. However, a call from the hospital questioning the x-rays and eluding to anyone's worst nightmare, let alone a 5 year old's, blew us to kingdom come. Weeks of living in hope amongst shredded reason and demented outcomes does nothing for you and everything at the same time. Sleep? Macbeth got more. Reason? Don't be daft. Reason doesn't work when reason is the only answer. Try reasoning at 3am when the bedroom ceiling is a cinema screen playing all the movies you hate but have to view. So what is to be taken that is good? Scanned to within an inch of her life, my daughter is going to be fine. And those things that broke inside us (everyone breaks) will heal despite the pain.
But I've realised that there's no escape. Cycling? It might keep me healthy but it takes from my family and buggerin off for a whole day to fulfil a dead dream is no longer justifiable. Wine? Numbness is dumbness. Reading? Escape is running away from now. Writing? Pulling the wool over my own eyes.
No. Reality is where it's all at. Living in the now is all the rage. And if anyone has rage right now.... I could make nandrolone look like a placebo.
It's ok. I'm not going to save the world or set out to reform you. Instead I'm going to point out that there's those around us that ARE reality. My friends that have the nightmare but are smiling at it's bastard's grin. Or those who's kids have gone down a rocky road that makes my last few weeks look like a summer meadow filled with unicorns and rainbows in comparison. I love you guys. I love your love for life and belief in it. What you are doing/have done is awesome.
If you are reading this... just sit for a minute now and mull it over. Who is suffering? There's always someone in the back of your head that rings alarm bells. Text them. Ring them. Message them. Call in. Tell them in your own way that they are beautiful and necessary. Tell them to fight. Tell them what every day having them around really means. Even if just for 5 minutes out of our manic lives... tell them.
After a month of emptiness (And I mean the darkest, foreboding hell) I appreciate what has been left to us. I would love to continue my stark atheism and derogatory nature towards all incantation and biblical contradiction. Instead, I find myself indebted to some God that listened to my honest and tearful begging before countless dawns. I owe so many colleagues, friends and family, random, caring strangers too... the cliche says 'the list goes on '... that right now I am just a little overwhelmed. But yez know who you are. And I used to carry a carcinogenic hatred to the ends of the earth, remember? Today, that black energy has been supplanted by good. I've learned through a time forged on the hot-plate of darkest hell that somewhere there are beautiful people with a candle for a heart that are there to see us through. And that... that is life's beauty.