Someone said to me a few days ago, in a perhaps slightly loaded comment beneath one of my Instagram photos, “you do seem to be living your best life these days”. I like to share my photography with just a handful of people I already know on social media and yes, looking from the outside in, I could see where she was coming from as the last few months have looked picture-perfect from the outside.

We’ve been to visit a lot of places since we moved north…stately homes and gardens, little market towns and quaint villages, we’ve also been to countless music gigs, walked around interesting urban centres, seen lots of lovely views, had meals out and encountered a lot of photogenic dogs, cats, birds and horses along the way; some of those aspects have been idyllic, like we’ve been on perpetual holiday. My photos reflects this; none of them are a lie or staged or photoshopped to look better than things really were at the time but they’re just the one angle on my life that I prefer to put out there, they don’t tell the whole story. After all, I’m a visual person and doing this helps me to visualise my own best life taking shape around me, however gritty things may sometimes be on the inside. Besides, I simply choose not to discuss my health issues anywhere else except in this blog, having different places for different output, which is just the way that I happen to like it. So then the phrase “best life” really suck in my head…it conjures up one of those memes that have become synonymous with the way certain people artificially stage their lives especially for social media audiences, so was I guilty of presenting a fiction through my photography (I certainly don’t ever mean to) but can I really call these last months my “best”? Am I guilty of masking myself with a glossy outer layer?

Because, as any of my regular readers will know, there’s been the underbelly. Though its been highly necessary and ultimately life-affirming to do so, relocating has been hard, for lots of reasons to do with my health, my autism, our work and other tricky family circumstances that have also been going on. We’ve also, at the risk of repeating myself, really struggled with the house we’re renting, the damp and draughts, the mice, the darkness all day long because it has small windows and is surrounded by heavy trees, the tiny fridge and the less-than cooking arrangements, the remoteness and need to go everywhere by car. My health has certainly taken a knock…poor sleep, allergies, fibromyalgia flare-up, painful joints and now costochondritis (aggravated, I suspect, by low vitamin D, cold-damp bedroom and uncomfortable bed) causing rib, back and sternum pain so severe its as though I’ve been in a car accident.

Yet, thinking about it, these things put together are all still parts of living a best life. Because a best life shouldn’t only consist of the highlights, the picture-perfect instagram moments, the glossy most-curated scenes. Though it is…now I think of it…so interesting how, if I share anything just a little bit more raw and truthful, less upbeat, about how I’m feeling in the Insta domain where people only expect uplifting images, it goes suddenly quiet as though I’ve just flashed my underwear!

So yesterday morning I shared, as a moment of raw truth, a small piece of video footage of sunshine breaking through the tree into our living room with pretty much the following caption written below it: This room that we’ve spent most of our time in, living and working, since August has been like a light-gobbling black hole, even during the height of summer’s heat, really getting us down…so to have the sunshine breaking through for a few moments because the leaves on the tree are finally starting to thin-out is truly newsworthy for us. I wasn’t being sardonic or even a misery sharing this, we were genuinely thrilled to have a sparkly patch of sunlight coming into the room for all of ten minutes because it made the whole room feel so different!

We had no idea, from the pictures we saw in advance of renting this cottage (though I studied them particularly hard for the very reason that I do need to live in a light-filled space for management of my chronic conditions) that close proximity trees blocking the south-facing window, most of them evergreens, would obliterate nearly all natural daylight from our main room, forcing us to have to use three “daylight” lamps switched on all day, whatever the weather, not to mention that I have never had to use my SAD lamp so much to keep my serotonin levels up.

Because of this, we have jokingly nicknamed this house The Darkness but, really, SAD is no walk in the park if you are affected since lack of natural daylight gets to us all at some level, affecting mental wellbeing and massively influencing the proper functioning of the autonomic system, our quality of sleep, cardiac function and pretty much every other aspect of health. So, then, if you happen to be more than averagely sensitive to shortfalls in light and have other health issues going on in the background, severe lack of daylight is only ever going to make you feel much worse!

So our concerted efforts to go out and about as much as we can has been a sort of counterpoise to all the other stuff with which we are struggling but there, in a nutshell, is the very plus point of there being an underbelly to all the good stuff. It’s the shadow side of life that makes us work harder at redressing the less palatable situations instead of being complacent. We’ve done all these things…made ourselves do them, appreciate them, really notice them, (in my case) photograph them…because we were struggling so much in our temporary home. The whole thing has been an exercise in focusing on other things that would keep us most uplifted and cheerful, to help us get through it. Last Friday was point in case, we were both feeling really at the end of our tether from a hell of a week so J finished up work a little early, we wrapped up warm and jumped in the car, late though it was in the day, and managed to catch a glorious autumn sunset walk and and a coffee in a beautiful walled garden with a café that we know of half an hour away which then made it feel as though the week hadn’t been so interminably long or challenging and as though the weekend had started early. This one small extra effort transformed both of our moods so that we laughed more and slept better. Guess what, I shared some striking photos of autumn foliage and fading summer roses on my Instagram account that day.

If things here had been more ideal, we might have just sat around biding our time taking it easy until we could move out again but, instead, we’ve worked much harder at staying on the bright side. So we’ve pushed our own boundaries, said “yes” to a lot more opportunities and looked for all the positives we can find as a counterpoise to the rest of it…and it’s worked because, on one level, we’ve had the best of times. Looking back at my hundreds of photos of these recent months, probably more than I’ve taken for years, which itself speaks volumes about the effort I’ve been making, they’re not a lie or a mask to what was really going on as we’ve loved exploring new places, attending music performances that we might not have bothered with if we weren’t so keen to go out, bending our own rules and stretching our usual routines…all as a concerted attempt to make the big effort to notice, and be more open to, positive things. An effort to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel…but also not to just wait for that tunnel-end but make the most of the journey getting there.

So yes, my friend is right, we have been living our best life…which is something the less ideal aspects have done nothing to negate so there’s no need to pretend to people its been picture perfect all the time because it hasn’t (and I don’t want to forget that when I look back at this time, either). It’s been so gritty in lots of ways, and it’s also grown me because I’ve learned such a lot about myself and about life in general. A truism I’ve discovered across all the years of having chronic health challenges is that sometimes you can find your personal power via things that seem to be going wrong and that’s something I try not to forget when more challenges present. Whatever, none of us need to put on the act that our circumstances are flawless, however much social media seems to encourage us to do so, as it’s those very flaws and imperfections that feed straight back into a real best life well lived. When we are open to admitting that a “best life” will always include some shadows, we’re not prevented from seeing that we are already living our best life, even before things become as so-called idyllic or perfect as we all hope they will one day do (if they ever can do, outside of photoshop). A bit like the brief spell of dappled sunlight that held me utterly transfixed for ten minutes yesterday morning, expressly because it was just so rare and unexpected in this dark room, we are able to appreciate the highlights even more because of all the contrast factors, and in spite of them too. That, to me, is what a “best life” really looks like!