The last couple of days have been difficult. I’m not going to write about what happened because some things don’t belong here, and the details aren’t really important for what I want to say. What matters is the effect they had on me.

Something happened that started taking up far too much space in my head again, and I could feel it dragging me down. It affected my sleep, my concentration, my energy. It is strange how quickly something can become enormous when it enters your mind: the actual event can occupy a relatively small amount of time, while its echo follows you around for hours.

But this morning I woke up and thought: fuck this, I have my things to do and I want to do them. And I think the important part of that sentence is not “I have things to do”. It is “I want to do them”. I wanted my day. I wanted the things that belong to my life. I had a ridiculous number of appointments today, things I needed to take care of and conversations I needed to have, and I wanted to get up and go towards them instead of allowing what had happened over the previous two days to decide what today was going to look like.

When I finally finished my last appointment, I stopped at an Asian supermarket. I love supermarkets anyway, but give me a supermarket full of things I have never tried before and I can become dangerously enthusiastic very quickly. I decided that after the last few days I deserved to give myself something positive, so I went in and started exploring.

At some point I looked at what was happening to my basket and realised that some form of regulation was required, so I gave myself a rule: five things. I was allowed to choose five things, and they all had to be things I had never tried before. It turned a completely ordinary trip to the supermarket into a tiny treasure hunt.

By the time I got home my back was hurting, but apparently my desire to create was stronger. And cooking, for me, is creating. So Uly Khaos fusion cuisine opened for business.

I made Chinese-style cannelloni, because apparently putting one country’s food inside another country’s idea is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in my kitchen. Then I made something that can only really be described as a Chinese pizza: a spring-onion pancake topped with pumpkin, mushrooms, spinach and burrata. None of this belonged to any recognisable culinary tradition anymore, which was exactly the point. And then I made my version of a healthy cheesecake with Greek yoghurt, pomegranate, a crumbled digestive biscuit and dark chocolate shavings.

Everything was so good. And somewhere between opening packets I had never opened before, inventing combinations that may or may not have had any right to exist and tasting what I had made, I felt that little burst of joy again. The one that had been difficult to find while everything else had been coming at me over the previous days. It wasn’t some enormous transformation. I was standing in my kitchen making weird food. But I was curious again. I was playing again. I was creating again. And that mattered.

Unfortunately, my back eventually reminded me that enthusiasm and anatomy don’t always have the same plans. I had promised myself that I would rest, so after eating I finally went to the sofa. Physically, I needed to stop.

But after a little while I thought: okay, my body needs to rest, but my mind can still create. So I opened my computer and started writing. Suddenly, I had my computer in front of me, and I was creating again, and somewhere in the middle of it I realised that this is what fighting for my life looks like for me at the moment.

Not fighting for my life in the dramatic sense. Fighting to keep it mine.

I think there is a temptation to imagine getting your life back as a destination, as if something happens, you struggle, you recover and eventually you cross a clean dividing line where the difficult part is behind you and your life begins again.

I don’t think it works like that. At least it doesn’t for me. Getting my life back doesn’t mean waiting until I feel completely fine. It means living it while I’m getting there. It means that a difficult day is allowed to be a difficult day without automatically becoming my entire life. It means I can be tired and still be curious. I can be worried and still have an idea. I can have pain in my body and still want to make something. Two things can exist at the same time.

Maybe that is what I have been noticing most lately. There are things capable of pulling me backwards, and sometimes they still manage to pull hard. I don’t always get to choose what arrives in my day or what effect it has on me, but I am becoming much more protective of what happens next.

I don’t want to give an entire week to something that has already taken enough from me. I don’t want every difficult thing to be allowed to expand until there is no room left for music, art, food, stupid questions, walking, plans, curiosity or whatever new obsession my brain decides to develop tomorrow.

Because those things are not distractions from my life. They are my life.

The last couple of days managed to hurt me. I’m not going to pretend they didn’t. But today I went looking for five things I had never tasted before. I came home and invented food. I ate something delicious. I rested when my body told me to stop, and when I realised my mind still wanted to make something, I let it.

I am still curious. I am still making things. I am still planning things. I am still wanting things.

I am still producing future.

And right now, that feels like a very good way of taking my life back.