119. We can allow our friends to help carry the weight.

But you've got to be honest about how you're feeling in the moment.

I’m sitting at home, on the floor by the fire while C. has gone into town on his bike to the supermarket and post office. I decided to say “no” to going and “yes” to staying at home, I’m learning how to get better at that.  Everything around me is silent apart from the wood inside the wood burner popping, the flames crackling and the wind outside howling while swaying the trees that hang over the roof of the house. I’ve been feeling like the weather here this week. Extreme winds, light rain and then downpours, grey skies with the occasional ray of sunshine beaming through. I haven’t felt very stable and I’ve been leaning towards the more negative, darker and denser side of the emotions spectrum. 

Up until now, whenever someone would ask me how I was, I’d say that I was “good!!!” but in reality I was feeling heavy hearted and didn’t want to put a burden on them, especially throughout the holidays when everyone’s having a nice time, or so it seems. After feeling like this for quite some time, I decided to answer all of my friend’s WhatsApp messages with variations of this honest text: 

At first I felt like a massive party pooper because why do I have to get so intense? Why do they even need to know? The answer to this question comes from an email I received from one of my dearest friends.

We email each other with our thoughts and feelings and we’ve created a digital space where we can both be really honest and raw, and know that nothing bad will happen, neither of us will be judged and most of the time, whatever’s spoken about in an email will never leave that format. Anyway, my email-friend wrote to me a few weeks ago saying that she was feeling very sad and that she’d realised that happiness and joy is a feeling that can be shared with friends. It’s easy for everyone to grab a bit of the joyful cake, eat it up and walk around smiling at your party and not want to leave. But with sadness it’s hard to do that. You don’t have any cake to give out because you didn’t have the energy to bake one, you’re playing sad music at the party and you have a boulder on your shoulders that you’re carrying with you everywhere.

When my friend told me how hard it is to feel ok with letting your friends carry some of the weight and that most of the time, people don’t want to; it broke my heart. 

When I read those words in my friend’s email, I wanted to take the whole boulder off her there and then. I was in a great place mentally and I could carry her weight without it affecting me. But how do I do this when I’m in a different country? I can’t do much apart from call her, message her, email her, send her some post or get on a flight, which isn’t always a possibility. Her words stuck with me though and this time around when it’s been me that has been having a hard time, I decided that instead of self-cocooning and resurfacing when I’d gone through it all, telling my friends “oh, I wasn’t in a good place but I’m fine now!!”, I wanted to let them know while I was in the hole. I don’t expect them to do anything, but letting them know how I’m feeling automatically helped me feel like I’d given each of my friends a tiny pebble for them to keep in their pockets for me. If I gave each of my friends and my partner a little pebble, I’d have less to carry. They didn’t take the whole boulder home with them and leave me feeling free of this heavy hearted feeling, but telling them about it did help me to feel like I wasn’t the only one carrying the load, I was being helped. 

I truly believe that humans thrive in community and that there is so much wisdom, knowledge, experience, love and care available when we’re truly connected with others, but our modern world is separating us, dividing us and convincing us that we can thrive as individuals and that we don’t need community. I think that we do. When we share how we’re feeling when we’re in a dark hole, someone in our community will either be in the same hole as you or will have been in that same hole and can sit with you, understand you, connect with you and if you want, help you to take baby steps towards the exit. There is so much wisdom to be shared with others and it truly does make our lives much easier because we don’t have to feel like we’re the first and only ones to experience these things. Just by knowing that someone else has or is feeling like you do instantly feels like you’re carrying the load together and it becomes easier.

*

I’m still sitting on the floor by the fire, I’ve put my laptop down on the carpet and paused my writing to add another log into the wood burner and from doing so, an analogy came to mind. If you huddle up all of the already hot logs, you’ll instantly get a flame but if you leave all three logs separately, they won’t catch fire and eventually the flames will be too weak and they’ll die out. We people are the same. If we huddle up together and share our heat, we’ll get warmer, bigger, stronger, brighter and last much longer. But if we move aside to different corners of the fireplace, trying to create a big flame on our own, giving our backs to each other, we’ll all die out at some point.

I don’t have many resolutions for 2024 because it’s not something I’m a big fan of, but one thing I’m going to get better at from now on is telling my friends when I’m sad, down, happy, excited, scared or nervous there and then. I’m no longer going to wait until it’s all happened and say “oh by the way…” because they deserve to know what’s truly going on in my life in the moment. If I don’t tell them and keep them in the loop, I can’t expect them to do the same. This works both ways and I want to learn that I can give out a few pebbles and they can give me some of their pebbles too. Instead of pebbles, maybe I can imagine them as precious minerals.

I sent this photo to my friend Gema and she sent me one, it made me smile and made my day a little better.

STUFF I WANT TO SHARE ↓

1. I can’t say I’m a real “fan” or that I know a lot about Lola Índigo but I can say that I love to see the people behind the character and the real nitty gritty human side to what’s showcased, so her film-documentary on Amazon Video made me cry because I find it inspiring to see others work so hard and achieve their dreams.

2. I’m recommending another

   Alejandra Smits
   essay and this one is called The wrong game of life and is about social media and real life. My screen time over the holidays has gone up and my brain power down, so I’ve deleted the Instagram app and have been using it on my laptop which makes doom scrolling harder. That shit is addictive and I want out.

3. This essay by

   Kayti Christian
   called A Year In Seasons was so beautiful to read and I was also left thinking that I wish I’d come up with such a lovely way of doing a yearly recap.

4. Maybe I’m late to the party but I just discovered this hair scrunchie brand called Good Squish and because I can’t justify spending 40 euros on a hair band, I got my boyfriend to make me one and it was 90% a success. We need to change the band for a tighter one and voilà.

5. Everyone is talking about it now and it’s completely hyped but the film Saltburn is worth it. I’d say that it’s my favourite type of film if that made any sense. After finding a great rabbit hole to dive down, I’ve also watched similar films like: Parasite, The killing of a Sacred Deer, Triangle of Sadness and then the “Jacob Elordi” rabbit hole took me to Deep Water. I recommend them all and if you know similar ones, please leave me a comment.

6. Dimanche Objects is our latest project and it fills our heart with joy to go on treasure hunts around French villages to find hidden gems and put them on sale for you all. We love interesting objects (so much it’s an obsession) so whenever people buy them, we feel like we’re not totally nuts for bringing this idea to life. C and I have been riding our bikes to the local village to send the orders and it’s cliché but a real dream come true. Thank you.