Now comes the part where I resist my natural inclination: my human urgency for connection, to download Hinge or call Annabel, Keaton, Paige, Ellie… Because it’s Sunday night and somehow with so much love around me, I’m still lonely, and I can’t understand why.
Chloe says in yoga they taught her not to judge her thoughts but to simply acknowledge them. I think about how even in yoga, my mind is not at rest. I was not taught stillness. I was taught to keep moving, over and around, but perhaps not through. I’ve found ways to maneuver around my pain, to retell stories of trauma as trials in triumph, as ‘canon events’ that saved me instead of hurt me. I’ve turned every stone over and found a silver lining, but lemons don’t always make lemonade. I’ve endured something real and painful and heartbreaking, but I’m terrified to feel it, terrified to confront sadness, for her cousin of depression haunts me. I’m afraid to slip into a space so dark I can’t recognize myself, so I run from feeling and at each corner a new distraction welcomes me with open arms.
Now comes the part where I know, I have known for quite some time, that I’m running. But to stop now would be to purposefully step out of my own way, to take stock of a life I call beautiful though I know it’s a life where discomfort has no home. Someday soon, I’ll build not a castle but something modest for the sadness that still lives beneath the surface, behind the calendar holds and the giggles and the smile everyone tells me lights up the room. I’ll tell myself: I’m doing it again, and inch by inch, I’ll push aside the curtains I’ve drawn on my emotions, and I will set them free.