The Phoenix Diaries: The Chapter Where I Flipped it Sideways

In which everything is still a mess and I'm calling it a winning streak anyway

Phoenix Diaries
Personal stories of transformation, heartbreak, and rebuilding from ground zero.

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I'm sitting by the lake and I've just had a thought so large I had to put my matcha down.

Sun on my face. Water doing its thing. And I’m having what I can only describe as a minor revelation, which, for me, tends to happen either by water or in churches, and I’ve already cried in one of those this month, so here we are.

I’ve been watching this guy. Charlie Rocket. Had a brain tumour. Wanted to be in a Nike commercial. Wanted to manage hip hop artists. Did all of it. And he’s got this thing he talks about — the winning streak. The idea that everything, every single thing, is a winning streak leading you to the big thing.

Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash

And I heard that and I thought, absolutely not, that’s mad.

And then I kept thinking about it.

And then I thought, well. Hang on.

Two years ago, my job ended. My marriage ended. My home ended. All within 3 months of each other, like the universe decided, “right, let’s just do the lot, she seems like she can handle it.”

She did handle it….but barely.

I’ve been looking at all of it from the same angle. The one angle. The angle I walked in with, set up camp in, and never once considered leaving.

From that angle, it’s loss. It’s the story of everything falling apart at once in a way that would make a very compelling but deeply uncomfortable film.

But what if I move?

What if I look at it sideways?

Or upside down?

Or, bear with me, what if I look at it like someone who has absolutely no idea what it means yet and is open to being surprised?

I tried this recently. Experimentally. Scientifically. With the rigour of someone who has had two matcha lattes and is sitting by a lake in the sun.

I turned on the tap.

Hot water. Immediately.

And I stood there in a borrowed kitchen — because there is no other kind for me right now, I am a woman who lives between kitchens, a nomad of countertops — and I thought, that’s a winning streak. That is genuinely a winning streak. Somewhere in the world right now, someone would consider that a miracle and I am standing here in my pyjamas, taking it personally as a victory and do you know what, good. Good for me. We’re thriving.

I laughed out loud like a woman who has finally, completely lost it.

Because for that one ridiculous moment, I wasn’t measuring my life against the gap between where I am and where I thought I’d be by now. I was just in it. Inside the actual day. Winning at hot water.

The noticing. That’s what had been missing. Not the wins themselves.

I’ve spent almost two years with my head down, doing the work, healing the thing, building the next chapter, which sounds very noble and is also absolutely exhausting, and somewhere in all of that, I forgot to look up and go, actually, look at this. Look at what’s still here.

I woke up this morning. Winning streak.

I have shoes. Winning streak.

I found a café with a bakery attached and they had a pain au chocolat and honestly, I don’t want to be dramatic, but it may have saved my life. Winning streak of enormous proportions.

I am not telling you to think positively, and if I ever end a post with “choose joy,” I want you to stage an intervention. Send someone to wherever I am, I don’t care what country, just come and find me.

This is about the angle.

The facts of my life haven’t changed. The job still ended. The marriage still ended. Some days are still an absolute disaster, and my brain still occasionally lines up every decision I’ve ever made and has them do a little parade in front of me at three in the morning.

But I get to choose where I stand when I look at it.

Maybe someone told me that once and I wasn’t ready. Or I heard it and filed it under things people say that sound nice but don’t actually help, alongside “everything happens for a reason” and “have you tried journaling.”

It’s taken nearly two years to feel excited about life again.

Two years. I say that not for sympathy but because I think we wildly underestimate how long things actually take. We see the before and the after and we skip the middle, where I have been living, fully, with all my belongings, for the better part of two years.

Days where getting vertical feels like a significant personal achievement. The slow, unglamorous, occasionally humiliating work of figuring out who you are when the person you were has packed up and left without leaving a forwarding address.

And then one day, by a lake, in the sun, something shifts just enough.

A different angle. And from here, I can see it.

Losing the job was a winning streak. Losing the marriage was a winning streak. The leaving, the travelling, the writing, the one hundred articles, the matcha lattes in foreign cafés, the women in different countries with the same look in their eye — all of it, every single slightly unhinged step of it, a winning streak leading somewhere I haven’t fully seen yet.

So here I am.

By the lake.

Flipping it sideways. Every angle I can find.

And tomorrow I might flip it again, just for the craic, just to see what else is there that I haven’t noticed yet.

But today?

Hot water. A borrowed kitchen. A pain au chocolat that deserved a standing ovation.

We are absolutely thriving, lads.

Winning streak.

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Tell me…

Name one thing that looks like a loss but might actually be a winning streak. I'll go first: literally everything. Your turn.

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