Read in solitude.
Dance in the middle of the crowd.
Stay at home.
Dream of epic adventures.
Sing to pop.
Scream to metal.
Tell me what to do.
You can’t make me.
Leave me alone.
Touch me like you can’t live without it.
Good girl.
A loner who’s needy.
Patient with a temper.
Passionate then couldn’t care less.
Happy and unfathomably sad.
Private while too honest.
Unmotivated yet wants to save the world.
Emotional but dead inside.
A contradiction.
A smile that’s hiding everything.
I didn’t want to turn 40. I had enough of a crisis during my 30s to the point where I almost walked away from everything. I’m not older or wiser, I don’t have my shit together, I don’t know who I am or what I want to do with (what’s left of) my life.
I spend 75% of my time alone at home being miserable. My life revolves around my husband’s ridiculous shift pattern and if I’m left in charge of the dogs.
But I started trying positivity. Not the toxic kind of ‘oh well at least you’re still alive’ because I think that’s worse than being negative. Just speaking to myself kindly, imagining what happy would look and feel like. Trying to think what would make my soul happy. Positive manifestation vibes.
You know what, it helped. I had a great birthday with great people. I finally mentally stepped away from the people who didn’t show up for me how I’d show up for them. I decided that I’m done with putting myself last and it’s time to get out there and find some things just for me. Volunteering at a local animal shelter, looking for some creative classes, taking myself to gigs if no one wants to go with me. Doing what I need to make me happy for what feels like the first time in 40 years.
A week later, we had some devastating news. And the world stops again.
About five years ago, I tried a new therapist. It didn’t work out, it was infuriating, they were infuriating to me. I felt like they didn’t get me or where I was coming from. They asked me to write something because it’s my best way of communicating. I struggled because ‘write something’ was just way too open ended for me but it did sum up how I was feeling and to an extent how I still feel to this day.
“I don’t know where to start” she said.
“Why don’t you just start anywhere and we’ll go from there?” he replied.
******
She turned slowly around on the spot and looked at her surroundings. She wasn’t at all sure where she was, how she’d got there or if it was the sort of place that she even wanted to be in.
It looked ok. There were her friends and family, a good job and a nice home, but was that everything? Was that all there was to it? Is that everything for a happy life? Is that all her life amounted to?
******
She’d always been a lonely sort of child, filling her days with books and make-believe games, preferring her own company to that of others. Other people were always so noisy and jostled for each other’s attention, but she preferred the quiet company of animals or a good friend or two.
She had never really felt like she’d found her place, fit in anywhere. Always told that she was too much. Too quiet and geeky, too sarcastic and scathing, too weak and emotional, too sparkly and confident. Always the one with the pretty hair and the pretty clothes, hiding behind things that gave her a little bit of confidence but making her all the more misunderstood.
As she got older, she realised that on occasion, she liked to be the life and soul of the party. That someone thinking she was ‘too’ anything was their own problem, not hers. She enjoyed telling a story and making someone laugh, dancing in the middle of the crowd as if she didn’t have a care in the world, drawing admiring glances because she looked so happy. She wanted to make the world smile because she was smiling.
On other occasions, she could barely drag herself out of bed, unwilling to go out into the world and be close to other people. Not wanting to feel their proximity, their anger and resentment at their own lives as they trampled down everyone in their path.
She was constantly at war with herself. A butterfly trapped within a snail or a snail trying to be a butterfly?
******
“It’s ok to cry, to be angry, sad, frustrated” he said encouragingly.
“But I’m afraid that if I feel, I won’t be able to stop. There are just too many sad and scary things in this world to bear and there’s nothing I can do to help” she whispered.
******
He didn’t understand. It felt like the weight of the world would come crashing down on her. That she could never make a big enough difference in the short time that we are given.
Life was travelling too fast and everything was passing her by and what was she doing? Just sitting there, being miserable, achieving nothing of any merit. She felt paralysed by doubt, anxiety, indecision, fear. A terrible fear of the unknown, of death, of an end when she didn’t even feel like she’d ever even begun.
These things that happen 