How does it feel to see your country begin to break?

It is a shock. It is a sharp jab.
It is feeling helplessly lost in not knowing. I didn't know I would feel like this.

I don't know whether it is my strength of feeling which is surprising, or that I didn't expect this to happen at all.

I feel stunned.
I don't know what I feel. I don't have a chance to look and grasp because I feel like I am falling.
Literally, falling with nothing to grasp, arms flying out behind. It feels like falling, and not in a good way, like falling in love. It is tripping and stumbling and air rushing into the ears and blocking out all of the sound but the words, saying things I don't want to be true.

And the breath. Visceral and physical breath leaves me. It is gone. It is gone.

How can it be gone?

Log on. The world reacts. There is a lot of feeling. Every feeling in the world came out today. Hurt and anger and fear, in viciousness. And sympathy. Reaching out, pulling close. These are the ones I notice. The hairs on my neck are not still today.

I am thankful for international friends. Thankful for wordless support, the ordinary. My people are hurting, badly. Talk feels impossible. Just angry words, now. Much later we will talk. For now we are hurting, and hurt people hurt. The hurt that lead to the vote and the hurt that follows. My country is bleeding.

Reading each new headline adds another dull blow. The reminder: This is real. It is happening. We can't go back now. The people have had their say. This is democracy.

I feel vulnerable and tearful. Small acts of solidarity are touching. Reminders of earlier optimism difficult. It feels too early even to laugh. I've never found it too early to laugh before.

I feel lost. I don't know where my home is.

My heart is breaking.

That is how it feels.

One thing I will miss about England

The sound of a hot summer's evening, in a country which is, firstly, crowded, and secondly, ever and always joyful about the precious few warm evenings that we do get. I love the way that you can hear everyone going about their daily business in a way that you never usually would, because they have all of their windows open and so do you. It's almost like living outdoors, in the open, with everybody.