Picture this- you’re in a car with two of your best friends, driving down a windy road with the windows down, wind rushing in, the stereo playing songs that make you want to sing and dance, beautiful views of the sea and coves on your right. That was me today.
Days like today make me feel so alive and grateful for life.
Packing for holidays is hard. Keep thinking that I’ve forgotten something.
Everyone needs to stop what they’re doing and listen to Hobo Johnson.
I started pottery classes today. It was a lot of fun working with the wheel and being able to create something with my hands.
The only problem is – I went into a bit of a funk afterwards because there was someone that I wanted to share this with, and I couldn’t. I still want to share the new and exciting things in my life with him, and I can’t. He’s not that person for me anymore.
I think that’s why I’ve been missing him this week. On Monday, I did life drawing and today I did pottery. I’m doing this new stuff in my life, my life is changing from what he knew it to be, I’m changing from who he knew me to be, and it hurts a little, to leave us further in the past.
I’m talking to some guys on Bumble and while I can find it exciting, getting to know new people sometimes, there are lots of times like right now when it makes me feel exhausted. I hate that I’ve had to start again, when I just want to be back in that place where I’m known and seen.
I miss being with someone who knows me and understands me. I miss being with someone who sees my heart and knows my hopes and dreams. I miss conversations that go beyond that friendly politeness and small talk about who we are, what we do. How much can you express in words anyway, people are more felt than they are defined.
I miss him.
No, I miss the connection we had, the depth of it.
I will have that again, I have to keep telling myself, even when it feels difficult to believe. I have to believe that I will make connections of substance again in the future.
Ahhh I feel gross today and I miss him 😦
I posted this on my Instagram today:
For a long time, I took pride in being someone who was independent and strong, someone who had their shit together. But in the last several months, I’ve experienced again the wounds that pain and loneliness leave, had my emotions betray me and slip through the grasp of my control. I’ve cried in cafes, on public transport, at work.
There were days where being ‘normal’ was exhausting and I was constantly running on empty, rolling through the motions of life but never feeling like I was actually living them. Not everyday was like this but when I wasn’t living in this bleakness, I was terrified and in anticipation of when it would hit again. For the first time in my life, I lost my appetite. I had no interest in food and felt nauseas constantly.
I guess my experience goes to show that even if you’re not someone who identifies as having anxiety or depression, you can still feel anxious and depressed. No one is above mental health.
Today is the last day of Mental Health Awareness Week but I hope that our awareness extends beyond seven days in a year. We are all on our own mental health journey and we need to support each other in this. I can’t stress enough how important good communities are. Mine has helped me see that the future can be my friend again, that one day I will feel safe enough to go back to being recklessly optimistic and hopeful. They have made all the difference. We all have the ability to be that difference in our communities. Let’s be people who walk with each other and carry each other through everything that life throws at us.
Before pressing the “Post” button, I went back and forth, back and forth in my head about whether or not to go ahead with it. On the one hand, I wanted to normalise talking about mental health and open up that conversation but at the same time, I was scared of what people would think when they saw what I had written. Would they think I was just being a drama queen? Would they worry about my mental state and change the way they interact with me? I’ve never made myself so publicly vulnerable before.
In the end, I decided to post it because dialogue is so tantamount to a mentally healthier future. If we want to see our country’s suicide rates come down, and for society to be a safer place for people to open up about mental health, then we need to cultivate that now, in our own communities.
I’m not the poster girl for overcoming mental health issues, even though I talk about it in the past tense in my post. I’m not sure I’ll ever overcome mental health issues, or if it’s even possible for anyone to do that. I’m starting to see and understand mental health as a tunnel – sometimes you’re closer to the light and other times you’re in the pitch black. We’re all together, though, somewhere in the tunnel. That’s why we need to join forces, so that those of us closer to the light can lead the ones in the dark, out of it. And just because you might be in the dark, it doesn’t mean that the light has gone. It’s still there, it will always be there, waiting for you.
It’s mental health awareness week this week and far out, having good community around you means all the difference doesn’t it?
I think of the last four months and how there have been some good times but mostly it’s just been fucking shit. I honestly don’t know where I would be without my friends and family. They ground me and help me to hope again for the future. We need each other.
I really don’t like malls. They glorify the excess in our lives and also, there are like a million mirrors coming at you from every bad angle, reminding you that you don’t look like the shiny models which grace the shop windows. Is it just me who feels like that?
Part of my distaste comes from a genuine disinterest in clothes, but a lot of it also comes from knowing that most of the clothes on the racks don’t have ethical stories. I go to the mall because my friends want to but every time I go, I end up wandering aimlessly in stores, feigning interest in items when really, I don’t intend to buy anything at all.
When I was 21, I read a book on human trafficking and the fashion industry and you know when you see something, you can’t unsee it? That was what it was like, and the more I was exposed to it, the more I seemed to stumble across on the subject and I snowballed really quickly into a deep conviction about clothes. I decided then that I would try my hardest to only buy secondhand or fair trade clothing. I’m 27 now and I would say that my wardrobe is 90% secondhand or fair trade.
I don’t have a massive wardrobe but I also don’t have a capsule wardrobe. I always set out to do what I could realistically achieve and for me, that’s meant that over the years I’ve reduced buying clothes that I don’t need and when I’ve needed to, try to source it first from op shops and then from ethical suppliers. From this, I’ve been able to build a wardrobe that is unique and has a lower impact on the planet. There’s still a long way to go though, and it’s hard with friends because sometimes I feel them feel self-conscious around me with the clothes that they buy. I try to not give off judgey vibes and honestly, it doesn’t bother me which brands they buy because for 21 years, that was me. We’re all on our own journeys and right now in mine, I hate malls.
It’s Thursday and the weekend is tomorrow. Once again I feel that dread of not having plans that make me feel like I’m making the most of my twenties. I feel like I should be doing more, having more fun, experiencing more things. Where does this pressure come from? The urgency and weight of expectations that I heave on my weekends actually detracts from my ability to enjoy them. In thinking that my weekend isn’t up to standard, I create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Who even sets these standards anyway? I do stuff. Sometimes I go out, sometimes I stay in, why is one better than the other?
Maybe I’m more affected by social media than I thought. Maybe I’ve internalised what a good weekend should look like through what is shown on Instagram and Facebook. But no one ever posts about a quiet night in snuggled up on the couch, watching a movie and eating takeaways with friends. No one ever posts about just spending time with yourself, reading in bed with a cup of tea.
We are so obsessed with being seen as doing something that we forget to just be. This is so cliché (and I kind of hate that I’m saying this but also secretly love it as well) but – we are human beings, not human doings. We should celebrate what it means to just be. We can’t always be doing stuff because that is fucking exhausting. We (I) need to learn to become more comfortable in sitting in the quiet times and just being – either with other people or alone. I think there are many of us who are scared to be by ourselves. But maybe for those of us who are scared, it’s more important to practice this?
I think we all need to practice the art of being to some extent – some more than others. I definitely do. The trouble is, I don’t know what being looks like. I only know what doing looks like. Being is this vague intangible concept – what does it mean to just be?
