low key highs and high key lows

turns out we just needed each other

This year did not finish us. I repeat. This year did not finish us. It did, however, drag some of us through the bushes, get us dirty, cause us to worry, and make us accountable. I called in the help of therapy, micro-dosing, chat GPT, a more robust supplement regime and my Akashic Records lady. (What? I needed to know I was on track!)

Some of us are still having downloads. Some of our findings were brutal. Lovers did things. Voters did things. The general public did things. Celebrities did things. It might have been one of those years for you. You found yourself doing odd things, too. You found the truth and didn’t like the truth. Life didn’t pan out. Work was…um, a lot of work. More things didn’t pan out. Well.

1. You are not alone

2. You are stronger than the year. Yep.

3. You will win. Whatever that means,

because the year is also a graph, a table of results. Looking at the damage, what have we learned?

Looking at the high points, what have you learned?

I’d never tried this before, well - today, but this morning, I began compiling a list of some of my high points of the year, which started something like this.

Going to Paris to celebrate the French translation of The Terrible - La vie précieuse

Going to an exotic location with a legacy beauty brand and shooting in a decadent wilderness

A poetry partnership with a major retailer

Receiving my honorary doctorate at Lancaster University.

Finishing my book The Catch

I had to stop immediately because, in answering this prompt, I saw that my instinct was to list achievements without considering how they felt. Could I even remember? With a shudder¹, I noticed that the things on the list might not be in themselves attached to feelings at all - and if some of them were, they skewed to the negative - deep feelings of overwhelm, extreme disassociation, profound fatigue (even if there were beautiful occasions or opportunities, and mine were supposed to be.) I was so worn out that I forgot to celebrate at the time, or they were so shrouded in a general world-weary malaise that I couldn’t locate A Feeling. I considered the flashy career highlights over the past five years that I don’t ever seem to remember without prompt. Don’t I care about anything anymore? Am I broken, ungrateful, or what? 😖