Five

It’s 10pm and I’m sitting in bed, typing this out and thinking about my counselling session tomorrow. It’s my first session with this counsellor and it feels daunting, thinking about all the ground we have to cover to catch them up on my life.

I want to be honest but am scared to be vulnerable with a stranger, want to be able to say the right words for them to feel what I feel, but don’t want to expose my weakness. Even with someone who has probably seen the worst of worsts, who is trained to be empathetic and understanding, I still somehow feel like I have to prove something? Still somehow feel like I need to downplay my pain even though the fact that I’ve made an appointment is admission that I’m not okay.

In the last few months, I’ve had to learn again that it’s okay to not be okay, but more than that – it’s okay to be sad, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes we’re so used to being comfortable and hearing good stories, we forget that life isn’t always easy. Life is ugly sometimes – it’s crying in the bathroom at work, it’s running until your lungs burst because you need to feel something else hurt that wasn’t your heart. It’s sitting in the uncomfortable with friends who are hurting and not trying to fix them, just sitting.

 

Four

My mum emailed me today, asking me how I was doing. This is the second check in email this week, in addition to one text and one phone call. And it’s only Wednesday.

I know it’s not a crazy amount of check ins, that she’s doing this because she cares, because her and dad know that I haven’t been myself post the break up and they’re concerned. Still, it feels suffocating.

Every now and then, third culture stuff catches up with me and I suddenly feel very disconnected from my Chinese family, and I want distance from them. I harbour a lot of resentment from having to be the English speaker and translator for my family, having my parents rely on me to be their mouthpiece and bridge between cultures, having being pulled into the adult world of admin and sacrificing my childhood in the process. I wish I lived in another city so I wouldn’t feel obligated to see my family every week. But I don’t, I live a 30 minute drive from my parents and if I don’t see them every week I feel guilty for it. I just can’t win. Chinese culture is intensely family centred and I feel trapped by that.

So I know that my feelings towards mum checking in aren’t rational, and aren’t to do with the fact that she’s checking in (because that is a nice thing to do) but I’m unable to separate this, and her, from my own complex around my Chinese culture. Even though the gesture comes from a place of love, it compounds the smothering I already feel and I think I just need some space for a while.

Two

A week after J and I broke up, I visited a church I don’t normally go to. During one of the songs, the pastor there came up to me, asked me my name and then described a vision he had of God making a daisy chain flower crown for me, said he felt God say that I was precious to Him, that He would bring something beautiful out of a place that’s been torn apart. The words that came to him (the pastor) were from Isaiah, specifically the part about beauty for ashes:

“He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion – to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” Isaiah 61:1-3

Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about beauty for ashes and what it means. At first, I held onto it like a lifeline, repeating it like a mantra, trying desperately to find hope and peace in it.

Then, I became overwhelmed with sadness and amongst that, a lot of frustration and anger towards God for not delivering on this beauty.

Today I’ve been thinking about how ashes by definition mean that something has burned out, has died, and maybe that’s what I need to happen for beauty to come out of this shitty situation. I don’t know how I feel about this idea, because as painful as it is to be where I am at the moment, I don’t know if I can bear to let him go yet.

I also don’t know how I feel about God and Christianity in general at the moment either. I was brought up in a Christian home and I understand most of the Christian ideas but often find it hard to reconcile the Jesus and God that I think I know, with the one that the majority of people who call themselves Christians say they follow. Anyway, deconstruction is a whole other topic that will probably feature in another post but in the meantime, how can I hold as authority something that I don’t even know if I believe? Maybe I’m just so desperate for something good, a reassurance that how I’m feeling now won’t be forever. Or maybe there is something worthwhile there? I don’t know, I guess we’ll find out.

One

You know those days which are an effort to just think about, those days where you just want to crawl into a ball and cry and have no human interaction? This is one of those days. It’s hard. “Being normal” takes a lot of effort and is exhausting. I want to sleep for 1,000 years.

But somehow, I’ve made it here, in this cafe, writing my first thought. I wish it was an uplifting one. I guess it’s more important that it’s an honest one. I feel like shit and in a lot of fucking pain but on these days I take it 10 seconds at a time and try to live like a normal person, hoping that one day I will feel like a normal person again.

Nevertheless she persisted.

 

Some introductions

Kia ora, and welcome to my blog!

Over the next 365 days, you’ll read thoughts and musings of my mind. It’s nothing fancy, the posts will sometimes be long, sometimes be short, but will always be honest. I’m a 27 year old girl, born in China, raised in New Zealand. My ordinary week consists of working as an accountant and studying as an English Lit student and hanging out with my friends, family and flatmates.

I’m currently writing this in a cafe where I just spent the last hour crying to one of my best friends because, along with those other facts about my life above, I’m also in the middle of recovering from heartbreak. She thought it would be a good idea for me to have a wee project to keep my mind off things. So here we are.

I am passionate about words and I’m excited for this journey ahead and what the next year will reveal!

Thanks for coming along for the ride 🙂

S x