Spinning Shields

Some songs don’t just play; they grab you by the gut and squeeze. “Love Is a Shield” by Camouflage is that song for me this year. It doesn’t coddle or console. It hammers. It pulls my insides out and lays them bare. The synths rise and fall like waves, unrelenting yet strangely soothing, a mirror to the chaos and quiet of my life. It plays as I walk through the ruins of everything that was supposed to last.

Love is a shield to hide behind, love is a field to grow inside. But where’s the shield now? Where’s the field? I used to think love could fortify me, hold me steady against the storms. This year, the storms tear through everything. The architecture I built, my fortress against time, crumbles first. Builders screw up, clients vanish, and my blueprints turn into funeral rites for dreams that never stood a chance. The money stops. Certainty dissolves like salt in water. My hands - hands that draft visions of permanence - now feel useless. Empty. I feel like the universe took my compass and smashed it just to watch me stumble.

And then, her. My wife. She’s here but not here, her body in the same room but her soul buried six feet under with her mother. Her mum - my rock of wisdom and warmth - ripped away by a sickness that moves faster than a name for it. She leaves to bury her, comes back broken. Her grief drags her into a fog so thick I can’t reach her. She’s a ghost I share a bed with, a presence with no touch. We’re both mothers, both fighters, but she’s lost in her battlefield, and I’m left holding up the house like it won’t fall apart. I try to be strong, but sometimes I wonder if I’m just pretending not to drown.

The melody of the song aches alongside me. There’s that clarinet-like synth, mournful and yearning, almost alive with its own story of loss. It weaves through the lyrics, lifting and breaking them, as if it knows I can’t quite handle this year alone. And the drums - steady but not overpowering - remind me of my heartbeat. A pulse that keeps pounding, no matter how much I want it to chill the fuck out sometimes. The song doesn’t just speak to me; it accuses me, dares me to hold it all together when everything else is coming undone.

And yet, amid the wreckage, there’s her - our daughter. Her breath at night is my anchor. Soft, steady, keeping me here when the weight of it all threatens to drag me under. She’s growing, you know? She’s not a baby anymore. She’s a little person now, with her own mind and will. She takes small steps forward every day, from her first wobbly run to the way she holds a crayon like it’s Excalibur. She looks at the world with a kind of defiance I can only dream of reclaiming. When she laughs, it’s like the universe forgot how to be cruel for just one second.

We had plans, big ones, to give her a sibling. Not an easy path, but one open to us - two women navigating the tightrope of science and determination to bring another child into our family. The dream was clear: a hand for her to hold, a partner in mischief and growth. But every time we thought we’d take the next step, life threw another punch. A death, a collapse, a diagnosis - and the dream was shelved again, and again, until it felt less like a promise and more like a taunt. The sibling she deserves, the sibling I want to give her, hovers like a specter, just out of reach.

And when I sometimes close my eyes, my mind starts spinning round. That’s the thing about this year - the spinning. I’ve tried to be the constant, the mother who stands strong, but some days I just sit in the quiet and let the tears come. My body’s betrayed me too. Cancer. Of course, it’s cancer. The cruelest punchline to a year that keeps taking and taking. My body, the vessel that’s carried me through adventures, motherhood, creation - it turns on me. Suddenly, I’m not just fighting for stability or connection or dreams. I’m fighting for splinters of my life.

Twenty years ago, I thought I’d be on Mars by now. The red planet, a new horizon, humanity’s leap into the stars. I believed in that future. I believed I’d build something that would stand against time. And now? Now I’m just trying to make it through another day, staring at the cracks in everything I thought was solid.

Love is a baby in a mother’s arms, love is your breath which makes me warm. That’s what the song says, and I feel it in my daughter’s breath. It’s the only rhythm in a house that feels too big and too small at the same time. Too big for the echoes of what’s lost, too small to escape my own thoughts. My wife catches me sometimes, just before I fall. Even broken, even drowning in her grief, she sees me falter and reaches out. It’s not perfect. It’s not enough to fix anything. But it’s something.

And all the pictures we run through, seem to be perfect, seem to be true. But they’re not. Perfection is a lie. The photos we hang on walls, the plans we make, the futures we dream of - they’re all trembling, ready to collapse. My wife and I used to share those dreams. The decision to create our daughter together wasn’t just biology or science - it was defiance. Two women, two lives, deciding to weave a new one into existence. We thought we could do anything. Now, we barely share a conversation. We’re tethered by threads of history and responsibility, but they’re so thin, I wonder how they hold. Somehow, they do. Is this what strength looks like - or maybe desperation? I don't know.

The changing words we’re taking in, seem to be perfect, seem to win. But nothing wins, not really. Nothing stays. Nothing lasts forever. Especially staying together. The song doesn’t sugarcoat it, and neither can I. But as it keeps playing, I feel something else. A flicker of hope. Not the kind that promises a bright future or a happy ending. The kind that says, “Keep going. Just one more step.”

It all holds together because we hope. Yes, indeed, something as bloody cheesy as hope ends up glittering like a golden get-out-of-jail card. A cosmic reprieve, a moment where the storms stop and we can breathe again. That hope is the thread. It’s fragile and ridiculous, but it’s all we’ve got. And for now, as the synths rise again, as the mournful clarinet-synth weaves its melody, that thread is enough to keep me standing in the storm. Waiting. Hoping. Loving. Just like that mischievous little pause midway through the song. For now, it’s enough to remind me I’m still here, and for now, that will have to do.