“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.” E.E. Cummings

It’s fitting that I’m starting this on the 31st day of the month. 13 has always been my lucky number and right now, everything feels back to front.

I have been fighting this battle for what feels like a lifetime, and now that I think about it, I couldn’t put my finger on the point where it all began. Perhaps I’ve been fighting since the moment I developed conscious awareness, perhaps it’s only been a few years. Everything is so hazy now that it’s impossible to say. What I do know is that I’m exhausted. I barely recognise myself these days. I’ve faded into a shadow of the person I once was.

But like an ancient rock that has been eroded over millennia, weathered and warn by the harshest conditions to the point that it is unrecognisable to the untrained eye, I am still standing.

A recent study revealed that contrary to the view that weathering rock acts as a CO2 sink, weathering rock may actually have the power to emit CO2 into the atmosphere in similar volumes to volcanoes. Behind this revelation is the discovery of an additional natural process that hadn’t been accounted for previously.

It would be easy to succumb to the weakness I’m feeling, to consider myself inescapably determined to absorb all of the energy that pervades the space around me and to endure the inevitable consequences until I eventually crumble beyond repair.

But I choose to fight. To prove that despite appearances, by harnessing the natural forces at play, I am still capable of volcanic force.