Holiday

My mum has spoken.

I am to take a break for two entire weeks. No writing, no studying: nothing. My health is at a worryingly low point - vomiting, struggling to breathe and struggling to stay awake as predominant symptoms - and spending my evenings "staring at my novel and crying," "blogging about the ex boyfriend and crying," "learning Japanese and crying" and "writing emails home" is not going to make me get better, mum says. No matter how many lemons I eat while doing it, nor how many glasses of water I drink.

I'm thrilled. I've achieved nothing in the last few weeks but multiple wasted hours staring at computer screens and an astonishing level of guilt; guilt that I'm not writing, guilt that I'm writing extremely badly and with little insight or humour, guilt that I'm not studying or remembering anything I read, guilt that I'm eating too many cream cakes because I can buy them in a pack and I don't have to do anything to them before they get shoved down my throat and I can go to bed a little bit earlier as a result. And the guilt is not helping me to get better. The guilt, in fact, is making me very ill indeed. A holiday from my brain is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Or it would be if I had understood a single word they said to me, and if they had understood a single word I said to them.

For two weeks, I'm allowed to do nothing but sleep, read, eat well, exercise and watch videos starring Johnny Depp. If I want a healthy mind, I have to get a healthy body first. And that's my priority for the next fortnight. To get better so that I can keep getting better in as many ways as I can. Instead of slowly spiralling downwards, as it feels like I currently am.

I'll be back: of course I will. Don't forget about me entirely; on the 21st of June I'll be back, and I will be healthy and vibrant and thoroughly sick of Johnny Depp and ready to blog all over again. I am The Write Girl, after all, and nothing and nobody can stop me from writing.

Nothing and nobody, that is, apart from my mum.