Today is the 16th of January. It is getting very close to the year anniversary of my mother’s death, which is also my sister’s birthday. I want to call her, my sister that is, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to have a long conversation. I don’t want to choose the wrong words or say the wrong thing. Out of nervousness sometimes I just talk about myself, trying to make connections to what the other person is saying, a strange sort of narcissistic version of empathy that I learned from my mother, I think. You know that teenage habit of joyfully shouting over your best friends’ stories because oh my god how much can I relate and oh my god I get it. It’s a cacophony of belonging and feeling acceptance and wanting to share that deep understanding and comprehension because finally, someone else feels this way, too. Finally, after feeling so alone and weird and out cast. Finally, somebody else is going through it, too, and is of my god talking about it. Loud conversations with no end, bouncing around from one topic to the next because you are just so excited to finally be together, to be understood. It’s you, you all if you are very lucky, against the world, finally. Sometimes, I find it hard to listen, as my mind races but other times, it is because I feel so exposed, after cocooning in my own space, with no mirror, real or metaphorically. So exposed, that I cannot sit in myself. I cannot sit in my feelings because I don’t even know what they are, so I say random things that somehow relate to what you are saying. Knowing in my heart that it’s not what I am meant to do, this habit compound my feelings of wanting to disappear back into my cocoon, my dark room where no one can see me. I don’t mean to make it all about me. It is simply a defence mechanism, to distract from the awkwardness of not being grounded in my body, in my soul. You become my mirror, as the bright light of a winter’s day, finally sunny, exposes the grey, cloudy sadness on my face. Yes, I have been wallowing. No, I am not doing well, I wish I could say this, instead of pretending that actually yeah things are great. I lie, in my very presence, without saying an honest word. Instead, I fill the silence with stupid commentary and repeated anecdotes. I feel the same uncomfortable twinges in my being, afraid of being exposed. I shuffle in my seat, cover my rounded belly with my draping scarf, my belly that has grown through comfort eating and my sedentary life. I want to be empathetic, I want to listen, but all of my energy is consumed by my own insecurities, by trying to hide them, wish them away. I didn’t know how bad I was feeling until I came out of my room. I’ve been avoiding being present, avoiding the ickyness, avoiding it all. But here, in your sun-shining living room, surrounded by quiet beauty, I feel it, here, now. You can’t hide from another person who is in their vulnerability. Vulnerability exposes everything.

Now it is today, the next day, the day after seeing a friend for the first time in ages and I must be honest with myself. I am not ok. This is hard. This is going to continue to suck and be sad and be hard and be dark, at least for awhile. There is a bottomless sadness inside of me that must be recognised. It must be recognised, seen, heard, felt, touched, held, and brought into the bright winter sunlight so that it may heal. I am not ok. I don’t want to pretend to be. All that I want is to be honest, to be real, to be a container for all of the things that are coming up, coming back, coming through me. I want to just be okay with what all of that is- not good, not better, not anything. I just want to be with it, no fake smiles, no cheap jokes about my lack of true self-care, of self-support. No – this is hard. This is me learning how to take care of my self for the first time in my life, without anyone having shown me before. This is about being deeply grateful for the friends, children, partners, family, and kind strangers that are all there – in their own ways – that create a web of support, not even support but just presence, empathy of being in this human experience in the same time as me. Everyone is going through something, and to have even one person who is going through something and sharing that experience with me – lessons, hardships, motivation – and setting an example by just going through it – for this I am deeply grateful.

It is not easy to decide to take a full look at your life and to try to do things even a little bit differently. Now we are further into January when the resolutions start to wear off, if you have made them at the start of the new year. It is never easy to change, but to try to shift one’s life from avoidance to presence, to be present with the hard things, for me this has shown to be not only the hardest, but the most important, even essential thing. I realise that I have been so deeply suffering from the blessures of the past, the shadows, the hurt that I have carried with me for my whole life, for as long as I can remember. Yes, the happy memories are there too, so why is the sadness so much stronger? Is it because I have habitually avoided feeling the pain, afraid that it would break me? Distracting my self with medicines to avoid the pain, any kind, any way – sex, drugs, cigarettes, food, fighting, yelling, eating. I would use anything to escape, do anything but simply just being present with the feelings. Perhaps this too, I inherited from my mother.

So now, can I be brave enough? Brave enough to sit with them, be silent, let them come into my cells and be a part of me, accepting them for what they are. Perhaps this is the key, perhaps they never go away, just like the happy memories. Perhaps I just have to not be afraid, to make space for them, to make room. Acceptance – is this all it might take to take away the fear? the thing is that strikes me so much is that although not everyone has the same pain, surely mine is worse that others but also is nothing compared to some others’, too. Although it is not the same as their’s, no two are alike, everyone is carrying pain with them, every day. We are all just tasked with hiding it. Pretending it’s not a part of us, it doesn’t effect us, pretending we are strong and inhuman. We are all carrying it through. To pretend that we are not is to deny our very humanity, our deepest commonality. So what if we all just stopped pretending it was fine, that we are great, that everything is lovely, and that it’s going well? Maybe it’s just me and my Anglo-American WASPy BS but nevertheless, it is difficult to know the extent of the problem unless we all start talking about it.

So for today, this cold winter morning, I will say that I am not ok. I am ready to face being not ok. Ready to take care of my basic needs with love – eating right, sleeping well, even taking some exercise. I will smile to say hello but I will not apologise for my low mood. I will admit that doing my hair was the most I’ve done for myself in a week. I will admit that doing both my hair and my make up on the same day seemed an insurmountable task. I will admit that making a date with myself to buy some new plants is to prove that I can actually make myself feel better by creating an environment that is clean and filled with the fragrance and promise of the coming spring. I will admit that I am terrified of the anniversary that is coming up. I will tell my friends that I appreciate their presence and I want to be there for them, too. I will learn to listen from an honest place. I will be ok with being seen for exactly how I am for this is not about me, it is about all of us, being seen in the depths of all of it, finished making excuses, finished covering up the truth, just being it the depths of all of it, ok with this part of life too, knowing that we will all get through it, somehow. For now, I will try to be present in this soupyness of feelings, try to recognise avoidance and let go of distractions, and to see what I might actually finally be able to resolve, or at least integrate when I do so. I am, at the very least, optimistic, and feel grounded in the fact that this is undeniably the right choice.