Our world is full of unsaid things.
My friend, Rily, called me yesterday, an unexpected FaceTime popping up in the middle of my ongoing search for a therapist. She asked how I was, I asked how she was, we both answered with a positive spin and an awareness that people don’t like it when you dump all of your problems on them at the beginning of a call.
“How are you?”
“I’m great! You? How’s life?
“Good, can’t complain.”
Never mind that both of us have family members with cancer. Let’s overlook the reality of life with COVID and wars. We’ll completely gloss over the fact that Rily called because we both mentioned we were mentally struggling last night and wouldn’t make an event.
No, instead we’ll talk about clothes, roller skating, and the way schools have gone and completely changed math on us. Anything to avoid going deep.
Because we both know what lurks in that deep. We’ve swum in those waters before, we know how our monsters can scare away others.
For a good fifteen minutes, we avoided the real reason we were there – the real reason anyone of us is ever here – connection.
And then Rily caught herself. The beautiful human she is, she stopped and pointed out that she’d called for a purpose. That we were here to check-in.
Not in the social media look at me and where I am kind of check-in. A real, deep, soulful check-in.
We talked about cancer.
We talked about generational trauma.
We talked about our desire to overachieve so we can overcome perceived faults infused in us from childhood.
We talked. Really talked. And it felt good, to say all the things that had been left unsaid in my other conversations with friends lately, all those things I’m afraid to share.
When my brother died, I had a lot of friends tell me that my grief was too much. And I got it. It was too much for me even. It was all I could talk about until eventually friends asked me to stop.
But it just festers inside. It just becomes a thing unsaid.
And we have enough things unsaid in this world.
There were too many things unsaid when my brother died.
Too many things unsaid to my grandparents.
Too many friends lost suddenly, all of us left without words.
It felt good to talk.
It feels good to have friends that can hold the vastness of the human existence. That understand I am both deeply saddened and full of gratitude.
To have people who can swim in the deep and bathe in the sunny banks.
My gender is not binary. My sexuality is not binary. Nothing in my life is binary.
Why do I expect my feelings to be binary? Why do I think I am either sad or happy?
I contain multitudes.
You contain multitudes.
And that’s okay.
That’s how it’s supposed to be.
So what aren’t you saying?
And how are you, really?
