An ode to my very best friends and our first reunion post-lockdown, after eight months apart.

"Time moves so quickly, carrying you through seasons in a haze of wild dreams and small moments. Before you know it, you're tearing off sections of it at a time, moving through it at a phenomenal pace."

"My battered, denim dungarees have been all over the world with me. Beaches nicer than the one I call my home, climates warmer than this one; memories are woven between each strand of fabric.

Now, though, they’re coming apart at the seams."

"Writing, just as it has always been, is a comfort. A band-aid over the cuts, protecting me as my body takes its time to heal. When the band-aid comes off, as it always does, I shall find that it helped turn the pain into beauty."

"Perhaps that's the greatest lesson of all; that sometimes our own character flaws can also be our strengths, when harnessed and channelled in a way that uses them for good."

"Random walks along the beach suddenly became about so much more than my daily walk. They were about embracing where I lived, in my first adult home, and capturing that for my future children; "look at where I learned"."

"The moon is bright tonight, and golden, casting hopeful rays of light across the water. And I think of my family, and my friends, all out there somewhere under this same moon, those same hopeful rays of light.

In that moment, despite the distance, they all appear right next to me.''

"The beach is quiet tonight. The sun sets over the coastline in a golden haze, warmed further by the fires on the shore. I toast marshmallows and take polaroids and raise a glass to the year that has been."

"It gives way and you hit the ground with a thwack and you lie there for a bit, un-moving. And just when you think that's it, you're done, this is the end, no more...there's more.''

"Each dawn, each day, feels like another chance to try again."