Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

Khalil Gibran

I have been plagued with doubts recently. Where once as a teenager I lay awake at night unable to sleep pondering the universe and human existence now as an adult, as a mother I ponder my inability to provide for my children and wonder whether my self-belief in fate and destiny is actually self-delusion. Is it not my fate here in this cold northern town behind the till of a supermarket checkout?

I contemplated playing the lottery tonight wishing for the few million pounds that would change my life and then stopped myself knowing that if I actually won I wouldn’t write anymore because the necessity would have been taken away. I certainly wouldn’t sit on my backside wasting my life away but the hands of fate would definitely swing 360 degrees.

I now realise that to actually succeed in life you have to be plagued by doubts. The super over-confident kids from school are the ones who never tried falsely believing that life owed them a living. They are the ones who are the big fish in the small pond. Me – I would rather be a tadpole swimming against the tide in the ocean of life.