wobble and feel

it's just another form of bravery.

i started a new job last week. (“how many jobs have you had in the last two years, mandy?” you may ask. great question, i would love to tell you. maybe 6). during training week of said new job, we were told of particular bathrooms we could use as staff (bathrooms i didn’t know existed).

i asked my coworker if she uses said out-of-the-way, staff-only bathrooms, to which she shared a few horror stories of the times her short breaks between classes meant she couldn’t use them, and had to use the staff-and-student bathrooms.

i looked her in the eyes and said: this is bravery. we are brave.

i speak of bravery a lot. i work with young people, most of which have had hard lives, and i like to remind them that they are brave (though perhaps they had no other choice than to be). but i’ve also been reminding myself that i am.

i shower, put on an outfit that hopefully doesn’t make me look like a potato (though one time my guy friend told me that my favorite dress looked like a potato sack), go work a retail job and small talk with strangers all day? brave.

i go on a platonic date with an ex-something, even though he breadcrumbed me a year ago? brave (and potentially a bit self-sabatogey and unhinged, but that’s a conversation for another time).

i feel wildly uncomfy in my body, spend 75% of my mental capacity spiralling, and still go out into the world and try to do human things? brave.

i admit to my new coworker that i’m feeling big feelings in my body (a literal sentence i said to her as a 30 year old), mostly intimidation and that i might not have a clue what i’m doing? brave.

a few days ago i realised that everything i am living out right now is something that i’ve chosen: where i live, who i spend my time with, what i do with my days. at one point, it was an option, and i said yes to it — and here we are. but right now, i’m not saying yes. i am stepping out into the world like bambi on ice and listening to what exists around me.

i am asking questions and receiving questions in return: please be patient, my life asks of me. please hold on. please let love in as much as judgement. please show up — even if wobbly (especially then). please wait for what is coming. and please know it will be good.

when i moved back from new zealand in 2019, broken hearted and freshly 25 years old, i was grasping for anything to tell me that i was okay. i had no idea what was going on. i sat on my childhood bedroom floor, tarot cards spread out in front of me, a shawl on my shoulders, sipping cacao and meditating every day. one day, my dad knocked literally once, opened the door, and we just stared at each other until he awkwardly asked me the question he needed to ask. my mum was mortified because “what if she was naked, henry!?” but i think awkwardly meditating on your childhood bedroom carpet with a shawl on your shoulders also feels like your dad is seeing you naked.

i even went to get a birth chart reading done to see if what i was struggling with was in the stars. (it was unreal. and it was obviously in the stars). the point of this *flashback* is, i was moving through the ending of my first relationship, left a country with people i really loved, and was back in my home town, and didn’t know what was wrong with me. what was actually happening was i was freshly 25 years old, fresh out of a breakup, and had left the people i loved. nothing was wrong. i was feeling exactly how i needed to feel. i just needed to let myself feel it (instead of trying to cure it with cacao).

all we need to do is the next right best thing for us. it might be doing the dishes. it might be becoming a human that makes your bed in the morning (apparently this helps with dopamine! i don’t make the rules!) it might be folding your laundry. it might be moving to a new town. it might be starting your sixth (?) job in two years. it might be trusting yourself 2% more than you doubt yourself and seeing what happens.

also, and just hear me out: it might be letting yourself wobble. it might be letting yourself exist in the not-knowing. it might be realising that this is exactly what this time of life is supposed to feel like. and it might be realising if you wobble and feel, you are also brave.