Keep going, keep going, keep going.

Being twenty-two feels like the worst thing in the world even though I know that it might be one of the best.

The problem with being twenty-two is that I am not old enough to truly know that life is long and sprawling, and not young enough to see it all hopefully before me. Even though I know that it is all before me, and I know that it is long.

I know that life will keep being thrown up in the air and I may or may not get better at dealing with it but I will always get through it.

I know that right now my heart is hurting and it feels like it might never stop hurting, but I know that it will because it did before. At least I am old enough now to know that.

Being twenty-two feels like the worst thing in the world because I just want to know that I will be okay when I do not feel okay and I can't see into the future. I want my older self to come and cradle me. I want her to show me all the things I do, all the people I meet, all the love I have. I want her to come and tell me that the fear that spreads out through my chest right now is futile. There is nothing to fear.

There is nothing to fear but I am scared of wanting things in case I never get them. I am scared of disappointment because I know what it feels like and I want it to end.

But at the same time I am not scared of failure because I know that I never will fail. Not truly, not finally, not permanently. I know that I am strong enough and brave enough and wilful enough to keep going, keep going, keep going.

Being twenty-two feels weird because I know that there is a future self that is telling me all these things right now. She is there, and I am here, and we co-exist. I move towards her but she is never still. She whispers back to the self that I am now and says that my big, beating, bleeding heart only ever gets bigger, only ever keeps healing.

Being twenty-two is the best thing in the world because I am here, I am living, and my heart is beating so fast and so hard and I can look forwards and backwards and know that life is good and pain is good and love is always, always there.

And, being twenty-two, I will get up off the floor (get up, Mollie!) and keep going, keep going, keep going.

Hoping.

This is, without a doubt, the most bizarre thing I've ever experienced. I think for anyone who hasn't lived through a war or any situation that turns "normal" life for an entire population on its head this is so... weird.

I don't imagine that lockdown and the threat of a virus is anything like living through a war. I'm not going to make comparisons, because people are experiencing grief and fear in different measures, I just don't think they are the same thing.

But this is of course coming from a view of the world that, up until this point, life moved smoothly and without significant disruption. World war, cold wars, etc were a thing in the history books. Something we learnt about at school in the safety of classrooms. Disruption happened on a personal scale, only affecting one family, one person at a time. It didn't happen to everyone all at once.

I think the thing I'm most surprised about is how quickly we adapt. Nothing like a crisis to remind ourselves that life goes on, we make it through. No matter what happens, we will come out the other side.

There is also a reason for that. Most of us pull together in bizarre times like these. We re-group, reconsider, work as a community. We do it because we are social animals, because we need to protect the pack, protect the tribe, protect the human race. We do it because we are sentimental, because we feel love, grief and, perhaps most of all, hope.

What I hope continues into "normal" life once this is all over is the kindness we have finally allowed ourselves. Kindness to yourself, kindness to others. Forgiveness, understanding, being gentle. I believe it is proving the only effective thing getting us through. Everything else, the selfishness, the greed, the lack of community spirit, has proven entirely useless. We have found a much greater level of compassion, and it is allowing the world to keep spinning.

I don't know. Perhaps I am being too wishy-washy. Perhaps my ideas and thoughts are not grounded in any "reality". But I am just hoping, that is all, and it is getting me through.

Pontificating on 'The Tiger King'.

'The Tiger King' is a documentary on Netflix about private zoo owner Joe Exotic. It has been an extremely popular, binge-worthy event. You watch for the shock-factor, the voyeurism, the horror, the intrigue. I finished with a bad taste in my mouth.

It is like watching an adaptation of a Graham Greene novel. Every time you think you've located a source of good, a source of morality, every human involved demonstrates the capacity for potential, or actual, evil. On all "sides" there is incessant greed for power, status and money. There is incessant violence, incitement of violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, exploitation, betrayal, lying, entrapment, preying on the vulnerable. Deep, deep misogyny.

I felt so angry at the end. There are characters in this story who continue to behave in the most damaging, horrific way. They did not get their comeuppance.

But, of course, that's the point. I've projected my ideas of right and wrong onto this story and I expect them to be met with a sense of justice. I expect it all to come full circle.

As well as making parallels with a Graham Greene novel, I kept thinking that the structure of the documentary follows the same structure of a Shakespearean tragedy. A protagonist falls from some sort of elevated status due to an act of evil, and the whole story world collapses. I even felt, at some points, sorry for Joe Exotic as if he had some sort of tragic flaw. But I wanted the conspirators to fall too. I wanted 'The Tiger King' to be like 'Hamlet' where every character compliant in the moral wrong dies (gets their justice).

But Shakespeare knew, like Greene, that that is not how the world works. Our sense of morality is futile after a point.

Despite all this pontificating I am still holding out for a hero. The hero being any vague sense of karma, justice, satisfaction. I want Jeff Lowe, Doc Antle etc, etc. to have their worlds collapse too. That would be fair, wouldn't it?

Just keep swimming.

Today I am scared and sad. A week of home and nothing else and suddenly it all feels quite a lot. I am still getting up, having coffee, watercolour painting, reading, writing, cooking. But I can't even hug my sister because she's quarantined in another part of the house (the old playroom, not the East Wing of our mansion). I haven't hugged her since I left for South East Asia two months ago and I can see her through the window doing yoga in the garden and it's making me want to cry.

I miss a lot of people. I miss my boyfriend. I miss my friends who I haven't seen for months. I am craving sitting in one of their beds with a cup of tea, catching up on each other's lives. I think the entire nation is dreaming of going to the pub with their mates. Little did I think I'd miss bumping into anyone in the local towns.

I am avoiding the news but I know what it's saying. Doom, gloom, death, doom and gloom. Can you imagine if we reported deaths for the other illnesses that kill in high numbers the same way we are reporting this? Perhaps it is a way of getting the public to take these measures seriously. Perhaps. It just makes me feel scared and sad.

And I am lucky. I am safe in my lovely home with my loving family. We can go for walks in the beautiful fields just outside our door. My mum takes great pride in the garden and it brings a lot of joy.

I am, on most days, doing pretty well and staying pretty positive. I just wanted to share how I felt on this gloomy Monday, because I think nearly all of us are feeling the same. And it's okay, to feel scared and sad, because God knows this time is so uncertain.

I keep thinking of that bit in Finding Nemo when Dory is swimming into the depths of the ocean and she's scared so she sings a little song, "just keep swimming, just keep swimming". It's actually quite helpful. "Just keep swimming". We'll get past this dark and scary bit eventually.

How lucky I have been.

Travelling is probably the greatest example of, or the greatest way to experience, time as non-linear. I spent just under two months exploring three countries in South East Asia. There were many trains, planes, boats, buses. Some overnight, some cutting through the day. I spent about seven weeks continuously going somewhere, and always somewhere I had never been before. Time stretched out, time seemed to skip a beat, time went in a blink and now it feels like a dream.

This is the weirdest part. On Saturday 21st April I woke up on Koh Lanta in southern Thailand and 36 hours and three planes later I arrived at my home in Buckinghamshire, England. And then, all of a sudden, it was like I had never left at all. Asia was a long and lovely dream. It was as if I had pressed pause on my house. I was back again and we started where I had left it.

Perhaps it is all made weirder by self-isolation. I was constantly moving and now I cannot even go to the shops without good reason. Did that all really happen? The pictures keep telling me that it did.

I can close my eyes and I can see everything that I saw. I can open them and it is like I never left. I am going back and forth and back and forth and yet I turn and I look at the sunlight on my bed and the open window and do all those places even exist?

The smells, the loudness, the quietness of the waves on the beach, the people, the tastes, the colours. They were all so different from where I come from. But I saw it. I went and felt it. And now I have this long and lovely dream and time is no longer one straight line. And how lucky I have been.

Flappable.

I am one of those people who is easily flappable. Well, in certain situations. Mostly in situations in which other people wouldn't even bat an eyelid. I become easily overwhelmed. Much less often nowadays, but I can still get wound up.

Bizarrely in moments of extreme stress, or when I am faced with potential danger or difficulty, I am incredibly calm. I get myself out of a situation quickly, I don't panic, I sometimes don't even get upset about it afterwards. It was what it was and all that.

Sometimes, however, I flap at what afterwards appears to have been nothing at all. Like forgetting a book I wanted to exchange at Waterstone's and having a short, frustrated cry about it in the car. Wanting to ring my mum up and complain that everything is going wrong today, even though the world outside is in crisp, clear sunshine and I have so many things to be grateful for everyday.

I've always been like that. Always been easily overwhelmed by little things. I know at the time that I am completely indulging in whinging or crying or huffing. Sometimes that feels good, especially when it releases excess emotion I have when I'm tried or hormonal. And that's fine, the world can often be just a bit too much. Even tiny, tiny things that make no overall difference to the grand scheme of things.

But it is so much more important, if you are going to indulge in a little self-pity, to come out the other side and notice what an absolutely stonking day it is. Because the little things are really nothing, and everything else is so bloody good, it would be a shame to waste it all in a flap.

Unsure.

I find myself so unsure nowadays. Once upon a time I would have found such uncertainty frightening. At the moment I am unsure about what I think, about what I want, about what I like and don't like. I grew up, as most teenagers do, with a burning conviction for anything that I believed or did. Everything was weighted with such importance, I was die-hard about it all.

I miss those days sometimes. I miss the complete abandon I could feel from being so passionately involved in something. I miss the escapism of loving a book or a film or a Youtube community so much it was all I could think about, all I wanted to be.

And then comes the confusing, earth-shattering self-doubt of being 17, 18, 19. The world is suddenly enormous and you are really tiny. Everything you believed or loved is not absolute or everlasting. Every emotion swallows you whole, making love and friendship and desire a vast landscape covered in landmines. Your conviction is still there, but uncertainty has crept in and it feels catastrophic.

Uncertainty used to mean not knowing who I was. It used to mean apathy or being apolitical or, God forbid, politically centrist. It used to mean confusion, which was horrible, and an inability to make decisions. The last two, if I'm honest, sometimes still stand.

But now I feel unsure and it is almost freeing. It is making me question and consider everything in greater detail. It is making me more compassionate, more empathetic. I am not apolitical, but I am evaluating what my beliefs mean. The idea of political centrism is no longer a great evil depicting someone who doesn't care. I am just thinking a lot more, in a sense, and taking time out from deciding on an absolute, definite opinion on everything. My uncertainty is allowing me the time to think.

Uncertainty as a pleasurable or self-improving time in one's life is, I realise, a great privilege. Recognising that makes me appreciate it all the more. I never thought I would be so content to be so unsure.