The Obsessive Diary

“Small children, small problems. Big children, big problems,” said my friend on the phone last night. We’re in the era of 18 - 25 when they’re not kids anymore that can be reined in and put to bed, when they have the reins themselves and are learning to use them. You wouldn’t hand a new driver the keys to a Ferrari, would you? They have to start on a moped at best, “a Reliant Robin” as Margaret commented when I had the same conversation with her later. But these young people in our lives are off driving the road of their lives with powerful decisions at their fingertips, their abilities not yet fully formed and no experience under their belts but with their feet on the pedals.

18 - 25 are the years that social services have no service for. Young people in care lose that close eye and are delivered into the world before they’re adults. It’s deadly. They’re not ready. Those are the years of high speed crashes. When I worked for the Fagus Trust, it was the 18 - 25 years olds we focused on; the organisations which scooped them up in clear understanding of the perilous nature of their unfinished neurones.

My own are bolshy and clear in equal measure. They’re facing me down with uncomfortable truths, individuating at a rate of one insensitive comment after another. It’s good! I applaud it! and also, f**k they’re rude and entitled and choosing their truths with the exquisite irritation of this particular generation. Have I found myself shouting in my head, For f**k’s sake mate you are going to have to toughen up - ? Yes I have. Have I become lost in daydreams of how it was in my day? You bet. They, and that is my two, have been so cared for and wrapped, so listened to, so heard, so heart-poundingly set free. And the result? There’s emotional articulation for sure, there’s a sense of knowing they have the right to know themselves even as they’re developing the sense of who they are, they’re bright and funny and clever, they’re nice people, yes, these things are true, but they’re also 18 - 25 in an era, confusingly, of oversensitivity. There. I’ve said it. One of the most brilliant minds I’ve ever met said to me in a conversation last year about the rise of fascism, “The liberal left gave rise to Trump and our snowflake kids have no idea what’s coming. They think someone using the wrong pronoun is a big deal for their feelings to cope with. Wait till they meet the army coming over the hill.” That same army that manipulates young people into thinking a 24hour shut down of TikTok is the end of the world.

Insensitive and oversensitive. What a combination. Those same young people who think nothing of delivering a take-down line to me will call foul at the mere mention of Get over it. I know when they do things that hurt me that it’s not personal; I know this because I’m 54. It’s my job to know it. I’ve learned. But they are 18 - 25. They’re not cooked. They can’t know. Their brains are still forming. They can dole it out but they can’t take it and the social era in which they’ve grown up has done nothing to help.

Somewhere between Pull your socks up and I hear you lies a road where my age group don’t have to tip toe through the glass and daisies of a culture that’s spent a decade misappropriating words. Where we can say, Now listen up without reminding ourselves too much of our own parents. The seventies were bad, there’s no doubt about that. Nothing wants me to go back to an era of corporal punishment and Jimmy Saville. We were lucky if our mother managed to count to five before driving out of London on a Friday night. I dropped out of university, flew to India and didn’t call her for a year. If she noticed, she never said. But sweet Jesus. Can our young people put down the weaponry of triggered for one minute and consider we might have some wisdom to impart? That differentiating between a peer and an elder might useful? And then I tell myself, stop. They’re individuating. It’s a good thing. And I bite my tongue and grow up inside and keep the home fires burning. I throw an invisible net around them and watch and pray and accept it was ever thus and this is how it should be. I’m writing the manual and as soon as I’ve finished it and figured it out and really learned how to handle this age they’ll promptly reach 25 and all my study will be for nought. They’ll be in the next era and I’ll be back at square one, searching for the handbook on 30.

Eleanor

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Dear Everyone,

These last three months have been hail stones, this diary an entry of sorrows and however much I’ve wanted to turn up with ta dah! a break in the clouds it wasn’t possible. (Isn’t the urge to please crazy?) But I can turn up with thanks. I know what I’ve been going through is the same as everyone else. I know my hurts have matched yours. I’ve been expressing it all here and people have said it’s helped them to see it articulated, which is gratifying and a relief because god knows there’ve been moments I’ve thought, Why am I doing this? I’ve written about where I’m at because it makes me feel better, and then I’ve felt embarrassed when the messages have come in. So incredibly kind and loving. So generous. You’ve helped me. Your kindnesses have been surprising and warming and deeply healing. I’ve always told my children that the world is filled with beautiful people and you’ve proved it. So thank you. Thank you all very much. I hope I can do the same for you.

Kit de Waal wrote in a recent post her wish for others to know, “kindness and friendship, both to you and from you,” and to “keep your heart open to possibilities, you can never have too much of either.” I’m reading Elizabeth Day‘s book Friendaholic; a brilliant exploration of friendship itself, and her relationship to it, and twelve months ago I stood with my toes over the edge of 2025 and said it would be the year I invested in community. These three elements come together as I stand with my toes touching 2026; during these past months friendship new and old has proved yet again a foundational and non negotiable value in my life. I love my friends. You’re more important than romantic love, and for the myriad sweetnesses that have come to my door this year in phone calls and messages and cards and lunches and walks and gallops and unexpected but unbelievably touching and incredibly perfect presents that have left me crying at the kitchen table that anyone could be so thoughtful, for all the offers and invites and arms around shoulders, thank you. My wish is that everyone reading this has the same warmth in their life, has friends like you and is able to give and receive as you do. You’re the best.

Okay 2026. What have you got? What can I give? How shall we meet each other, and where? This coming year feels wide open. I feel bare walking into it. I’ve no idea what’s in store. Not even an inkling. But thanks to you all, I do feel in community. We walk together.

Eleanor

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And so it goes. I seem to have drawn to a halt. It’s winter. Hibernation is obvious.

Christmas was incredibly loving in the arms of my Somerset family. They filled me with the good stuff. I’m grateful for them. I love them so much. Me and Margaret cooked up a storm, everything was delicious. We talked and walked and opened presents. We put on glad rags and toasted our fortune and love for one another. I missed J&B but there it is.

I stayed at The Chapel which was luxury and white cotton, silently closing doors and carols on Christmas Eve. From a corner table the perfect view to little theatre plays of families gathering, seasonal jumpers on, granny with her friend in tow, brothers and a neat, nail polish girlfriend nervously eyes front wishing he’d speak to her and not his mother, so well turned out, so intimidating. A rowdy group at the back held pints aloft, a young lad couldn’t finish his. A pair of stuff & nonsense friends beside me attacked steaks and chinked large glasses, a daddy with small squirming child tried to set her attention on the balcony while his mother in law yet again failed to be interesting and sat back with a thump and refuge in a cocktail. I have sat alone and sober in many crowded public rooms this Christmas. It’s a practice of looking and resisting the self-conscious threat of embarrassment. No one will remember the woman watching.

And so it passed in immense care and tradition, the sun set on Boxing Day and I drove home. This was a shock. The empty farmhouse. Me and the cats. The last days of 2025 shed of so many relationships. I never saw it coming, that I’d be heading into 2026 like this. I feel unencumbered and silent. Took J for lunch, picked him up from his dad’s, talked of his possible paths and dropped him off again; now he’s gone to Wales. B is still in Stoke. Yesterday I cried all morning (thank you M for calling). Today I don’t want to get up but I will because this one blessed life holds what I can’t see.

And so it goes.

Eleanor

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Throughout the funeral I saw her swooping over fields, laughing, arms outstretched, doing double backflips; that was the Jeanetta I knew. Elegant and social. In jeans, outside, hair tousled. It was supposed to be a private gathering, just her family and her closest friends but then it grew and I got the call and my Friday which was supposed to be have been in London with Beth, and lunch at my brother’s changed shape. As did theirs, also by death. Beth flew to New Orleans for two funerals and my brother stayed in Scotland for a third.

Bright sunlight after weeks of rain, the church heating had packed up and within that stone, black coats and breath, friends she’d been at school with, the stained glass tinted grey hair blue. Her brothers and sisters and children; the red of their genetic code flowing to her grandchild in quick bought mourning suit. St John the Baptist on a steep hill, as I parked there were worries of brakes and mud. Gloves were slipped on. Boots and heels trod carefully. The village hall was locked and echoes of Is there anywhere? and I think I’ll last took turns like the baton in an over sixties relay race to last through the service. A few of us joked about squatting behind a gravestone.

It was sad. Jonny, Kelvin and I grouped together. A small dog, Roxanne, with feather soft coat sat in the pew in front of us and gave me regular doe eyes. We sang the hymns of childhood and, though God knows the Christians have a lot to answer for, their music is a steady trunk to lean against. Jerusalem rose and fell between us. The eulogies were almost impossible to get through. Her leaving in wicker coffin caused a crumpling throughout. But being Jeanetta, when the ancient doors were opened for her carriage and us to follow, the streaming beams of pure piercing sunny blinding winter sunshine elevated everything to presence. It was her. And we sobbed past the ancient yew tree and held arms in the clutter of her leaving, and the black Land Rover that took her body away shone and I told Kelvin I had seen her flying.

There was a wake. There was coffee and champagne and sausage rolls and an open fire. A man called Leopold told me he never remembers faces or names, even as a child. His whole life wondering if he’d met this person before. His grandson led him away. I won’t forget his name or his face. I led Kelvin away eventually and we talked non-stop all the way to Shepherd’s Bush where he jumped out and I parked and checked in to my hotel. Two nights in London. Supper at Louise’s. Jacko walked me home.

Met Anna on the heath, got lunch at the Tabernacle with Jacobi working - the first time I’ve seen him in grown up adult action; how it touched my heart. Navigated the heaving crowds of Portobello to get coffee and two hours of joy with D then back again to the Tabernacle to meet Margaret and all for the panto.

West London has a look. I’m probably it without knowing it, just like everyone else. Men in flat caps and women in toreador velvet hats. Kookiness and boots. Weathered party skin and straw man hair as if they’ve just stood up from rolling about in a field. I watched and drank water and watched and felt the eyes of not being enmeshed in the throng and carried on watching. A child in tutu lay on the floor without caring. Star-shaped limbs, eyes closed. I dragged her closer to my chair to keep her head safe from the pints and legs and adults at the bar.

Aidan turned up and got a ticket despite the show being sold out. It was talent and voice and west London history. It was belonging to a place. I lost my footing in the interval and cried trying to hide it while the bar filled and the loos queued. Grief continues despite golden lions and pride in Lily who put the stage together. I’m still out at sea, no land in sight.

Lunch with E on Sunday at Dorian which used to be Raoul’s and is now more chi-chi than you can shake a celebrity stick at. We ate beautifully. I drove home. I slept.

Happy Christmas everyone,

Love

Eleanor

p.s. …..

FALLOUT got Editor’s Pick in Publisher’s Weekly! 4th in a row for Empress Editions ✨👑 . Hugely proud to be part of the team led by Alisa Kennedy Jones. Thanks fellow Empresses. You’re the best. We’re running a simultaneous UK / US release for 21st April 2026, so wherever you are, you can pre order your copy now…

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I’m not sure when my dislike of Christmas set in. Was it as a child? I don’t think so. I remember the excitement and routine, the stockings and tinsel on my parent’s bed, the marble run set up in the upstairs hall, the chairs we were allocated, the annual argument over whether to eat lunch before or after presents. I have happy memories of Christmas. And yet. Everyone in my family is the same. We view it as a chore, a bore, an inescapable thing to get through. It depresses us and makes us want to run for the hills. This year I’m hiding in the arms of old friends whose family will swallow me up in their joy and togetherness and make it all right, make it better. I will be tempered. My children are off with girlfriends and their father, my siblings are disbanding in five different directions, our mother is dead but this isn’t the first year we’ve elected not to be together; we’ve voted this way before.

So when did it start? When did high streets of baubles make me wild, when did Seasons Greetings and aisles of glitter chocolate make me hate people? I have to avoid high streets. I stay out of shops. I don’t want to feel this way but I do. I become judgemental (more judgemental). I think everyone’s an idiot. I can’t understand why they fall for it year after year. I rarely want anything present-like but at Christmas I really don’t want anything. I actively reject the idea of receiving. It makes me feel bad.

And the giving? I give to my children (of course I do) and I will give to Margaret who’s catching my Christmas fall with the arms of her family, but that’s it. I don’t want to trail about searching for tokens to symbolise I love you. If I love you (which I do) I’ll give to you all year round in actual tokens of affection; a phone call when I’m thinking of you, a small present sent for no other reason than that it’ll make you laugh or brighten your day or comfort you when you need it. This has happened to me this year, surprise presents arriving in the post inspired not by some arbitrary knee jerk to an annoying Christian date but by actual loving kindness. These have meant the entire world.

So bollocks to Christmas, and sorry if you love it and I have depressed you. This morning my friend Melissa was looking for the mice living in her curtains and dug out this card I sent her years ago. I am working on it.

Eleanor

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I have the sensation of roots being pulled from my heart, dead roots that have been cut off from their source, no longer alive roots but tangled entanglements that no longer pump the drug. It’s visceral, the sensation of withdrawal. I’ve been putting out fires for decades; crystal meth, cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, sugar, needles, anger but this is the smouldering heart of the matter. If I were a twelve step person, SLAA is the group I’d go to.

I’ve often wondered what it is I’m really addicted to. Giving up all those other things was hard, but it wasn’t impossible. I didn’t feel like I was dying.

Now I understand sponsors and one day at a time. The alcoholic who can’t stand it anymore and buys a quart of vodka. My smoking friends who can’t quit. My cells are gasping. I’m looking around for my hit and I can’t find it. I’ve cut off my supply, the tendrils that have gripped and tugged and called it love have withered and grown dry. Recovery is pulling them out and I can feel it. They’re leaving casts amongst the healthy red; white trails of where they used to be. They’ve wrapped and possessed and called themselves true but they weren’t love they were survival. That’s how addiction sets up shop, it always starts as an answer to a problem.

Eleanor

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When I was a very small child I witnessed a terrible violence. Its flashback was the domino which set off all the others, it was the key waiting to be fitted in the lock, and when that happened, when the black box opened in my head, all that had been crazy-making made sense. This week I’ve been drawn again to that moment, it’s been present, and it’s helped me make sense of something else.

In the vast space that’s opened up since the end of one relationship and the repositioning of others, longing has revealed herself as a constant, vocal companion. Or as Tara Brach would call it, the wanting mind. And with Tara Brach holding my hand, I’ve been investigating. My version of longing positions herself as desperate for work success. She focuses on the most public version of me, I want, I want, I want. If this obstacle would clear, I would be happy. If this number was achieved, I will be safe. Longing tells me that out there, in the big wide world, too enormous to comprehend, pieces must be moved to achieve peace, and she reminds me I am small and must shout the loudest. She tells me it’s impossible, yet I must do it. She fills me with insistence. She tells me this time it’s real.

When I was a very small child I witnessed a terrible violence. Let’s put these two pieces together. I was alone, but for what I was witnessing. There were adults but there was no one to tell. Had I tried (did I try? I don’t remember) I would not have been believed. I know this from trying to tell of other moments, not as bad but pretty bad. I was in a basement with a large house above me. I was small with a vast world outside. I was suffocated and trapped, as if I was drowning with the enormity of the task at hand, to stop this thing that was happening. I remember that. I remember thinking I must do something. It was up to me, and me alone. There was no one there to help me.

That feeling of small and I must do something, the juxtapose of impossibility, longing has carried with her. She imprints it perfectly onto my present day like a tracing paper plan of repetition. This house sits perfectly on that one. It’s so familiar, so instinctively perfect in its copy, that despite all her arguments to the contrary, I can’t look away. I know that the heart stopping panic I feel now in the face of things beyond my control is sourced directly from that moment, many years ago when I was small. Longing is clever, isn’t she? She’s so beautiful in her deception, and too, she is born from the natural desire to thrive. There are so many layers.

There’s more.

Because imbued in that origin moment was love. I determined it was up to me to rescue. I set out on a mission to move heaven and earth. Imagine a three year old taking on the world. Imagine it was life and death. That was me. And yesterday, listening to Tara Brach teach on addiction, lying on my yoga mat, a heavy blanket, an eye mask, I witnessed the insane bravery of that belief for the first time. I put the pieces together. I saw her, my small self, and cried for her imagining she could do this, the impulse to stand in the way of fire, the thought that she was strong enough. And I cried for her misunderstanding. And I cried for the inevitability of her failure, and how she would take it on as her fault. No wonder longing overlays the everyday frustrations of my work with such a sense of drowning. No wonder every frustration feels like life and death. She is repeating all she knows. And it’s no wonder, with the repositioning of relationships, that this should come up today. I cannot move heaven and earth. I cannot save anyone.

Eleanor

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I’ve been thinking about necessary family estrangement and what happens when relationships breakdown. I’ve been thinking about last chapters and what they look like. I’ve been thinking about endings.

Yesterday I heard the news that a friend’s sister had died. It was completely unexpected and very sudden; they’d had dinner the week before, she was on a jolly visiting friends, her heart gave way, no one saw it coming. I knew her, too. We’d holiday with her when the children were small, Easters in Polzeath, she would collect mussels at low tide and serve moules marinières to sandy guests in the house on the cliff, huge bay window to the sea. The crossword and shaky put-me-up table. The sloping garden and volcanos of sand that exploded at high tide. The low wall to the rocks below. She was full of smiles to guests. She was welcoming. I know my friend had a chequered relationship with this open-armed, Cornwall holidays sister, they rode that sibling rodeo many times, and many times, fell off. But they also got back on and I know their relationship was bonded, it had found its accepting way. They didn’t hurt each other. There was love in stepping around the difficult bits.

There’s no need to be friends with our siblings. There comes a point, especially easy to see with both parents gone, when it slips from enforcement to choice. The blood link is unchangeable, but do I like you? Do I want to hang out with you? If a non-blood-related person treated me like you do, would I carry on taking their calls? I was talking to an old friend yesterday about this and he said, “It’s always a good measure, to ask if a friend did that, would you accept it?” Because excessive rope is given to siblings, along with a normalisation of treatment, and things can get way out of hand. It’s worth asking, as I’m over fifty and with both parents dead, what’s the contract now?

I met with my therapist this week, she who I saw through divorce and debut novel, the two big events of my forties. It was wonderful to be in the therapeutic space with her again, an evenness of keel I know so well; despite almost a decade passing, we slipped right into it. I talked to her about sibling breakdown and she asked, “What does the last chapter look like?” This I don’t know. I couldn’t answer.

There is five year old me searching for the person she loved most in the world, the person she looked up to, followed, idolised and believed in. There’s ten year old me hanging on their every word. There’s teenage me trying to be them and young adult me devastated when, four years older than me, they went away. There’s hearing of their glamorous life and, unable to compete, running in the other direction. There’s watching their relationship with our father, and unable to compete, trashing everything. There’s the slow dawning fact of our competition. And this: six years ago I was faced with a binary choice. Publish and be damned, or pull the book and remain belonging. History says what I did and there’s the year of silence that followed.

All of this, from all-in love to shocking realisation things are not what they seem has been the colour of this autumn into winter. An arm’s length empathy won’t work anymore. Taken as a whole there’s a treatment that, if from a stranger, I wouldn’t tolerate for a single minute. “Put up with it”, “eye roll”, “siblings” - all these are okay when balanced with enough of the good stuff to make them minor burns. I’m not easy either. I know I annoy the hell out of all of them. I know they wish I’d shut up. Another sibling said to me earlier this year, “I don’t always agree with you, but I’ll always have your back” and it was one of the - no, in fact it was the first and only time I’d heard those precious words. It was a landmark moment. I cherish it.

But this other is different. With them the balance of good stuff to upsetting doesn’t apply. With them, the base line is corrupted. It is not safe. They hurt in unimaginable ways. Five year old me doesn’t want to believe it, ten year old me is still searching. Teenage me misses the thrill of their company, and young adult me feels keenly their rejection and shame. They have a story about me. It’s unshakable. It’s nothing like the truth and I’ve had enough.

Eleanor

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