ONE
I am told that in the late seventies, one of my aunts (or, more precisely, one of my mother’s cousins) made a list in some book of records for being one of the strongest women in Europe. Certain family members maintain this is true, though I’m still hunting down the evidence. Looking at the women who came before me, it’s not outside the realms of possibility. Right into her late sixties, my grandmother was a woman of remarkable physical strength. My mother and I are recipients of the said same gene. I don’t bench-press or lift weights regularly, so I’m hardly making the best use of my so-called hereditary strength.
Anyway. Maybe it isn’t true at all. Perhaps we’re no stronger than anyone else (v likely.) Maybe it’s a fable, something we told ourselves to take the sting out of life. If we believed we were vulnerable and soft, we’d be much angrier about many things that have happened. But no, we laughed them off and shook our heads. We said something like, “well, it is what it is.”
In addition to rejecting sadness, we want to get too much done and often bite off more than we can chew. We do everything to push through the trenches and survive this life, and we don’t call in near enough help. We really want to go for it even when really going for it comes at a cost. It seems we would rather struggle alone than be disappointed by others. The other thing I inherited from the women in my life is the reluctance to say what I need, even to myself. I still think I can do everything. I have been known to take on too much because I couldn’t be bothered waiting for others to help didn’t know how best to ask for help. But it’s 2023.
It’s 2023, and this old model is falling has fallen apart.
TWO
How do I know? Well, I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but I’m telling you this. In December, I was in Portugal on the way to dinner with someone I should not have gone to dinner with. It was a Saturday night, and as we crossed a busy road, he thought it appropriate to take hold of my hand. I did not expect it. I did not expect to like it. I didn’t care for the gesture or the feel of his hand; simultaneously, my body flooded with the terrible recognition of want.
It had little to do with the man. His hands were clammy, and he was performing a gross I need to take care of you; let’s get you across this road thing, which wasn’t lost on me. But also not lost - the lights flickering on in the house of my body. It felt like relief. It felt like softness after the relentlessness of the year, after all the things I strategised through / barely saved myself from. Funny how hunger can slowly form. What you ignore grows into a deficit; can slowly wreak havoc.
So what in the hell was going on? That night, did I need saving?
That night, was part of me tempted to turn off my functions?
THREE
Ah, the cruel work of ‘functioning.’ When grieving in December and trying to explain said grief to a friend, this is how I described the complete, latent fear;
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