It’s easy to forget your worries when you’re singing Michael Jackson songs on the A259. All those fears seem a million miles away when you’re on the road with the one you love. Who, incidentally, knows every word and inflection to every song, something your childhood self would have lost her mind about.
We visited my brother and Sister-in-law in Kent this weekend and it was perfect. It felt like a holiday, a break away from home. At one point I commented that it was nice to be by the sea and it was pointed out that I actually live in a seaside City. Visiting the harbour shouldn’t be a novelty but it feels like one.
So there I found myself, on the Harbour Arm with a Peach Bellini in my hand and the wind in my hair, feeling nothing like the person I was talking about to my Sister-in-law. Nothing like the angst-ridden late-thirty something crying at a bus stop just three days prior.
I always think about this, how easy it is to forget when you’re yammering away, soaking in other people’s hope and fears, all their excitements. I’m not alone and I know this for a fact and yet, as the days draw to a close I feel like I must be the only person worrying about this stuff.
It’s nice to know that’s not true and of course it isn’t. It’s good to say a thing out loud and have your companion say “I completely understand.”
I’ve been talking about not being fine since I started this blog last week and people are great. The people I choose to share it with anyway. Not everyone needs to hear it.
Nobody has been surprised and I think that’s telling. I thought my loved ones would be shocked to the core that someone as together as me could feel this way, but I don’t think I’ve given them enough credit for knowing me.
Anxiety is a part of me and I’ll shuffle up to allow it room. I can accept I need help and that this is one of my characteristics but there will be no letting it get away with too much. I’m going to learn how to deal with it, how to live with it in the background.
Incidentally, have you ever seen The Babadook? That film has the greatest depiction of what living with depression and grief can be like, it moves me every time I think of it. Check it out.
So, yes. This weekend was a good one. Now to smash Monday.
How was yours?
Gutter & Stars 