To Be Heard, Held, Or Helped
Conversations that go beyond asking 'what's new?'
For years, sleep paralysis meant I’d wake up unable to move or speak.
Despite my immobilized state, my mind would be fully aware that it was awake and not dreaming. As a kid, I’d imagined it must be like getting anesthesia for surgery but then still being fully aware of everything that was happening, while it happened.
Terrifying.
Most days I wake up in a fog of confusion, but not today… today I woke up before my alarm. I was alert but not anxious. I felt light and unbothered. There was no dread, no dark cloud, no background level of perpetual urgency or fear.
Weird… but also, cool?
Honestly, it was so foreign I wondered what was wrong. So I thought back, recounting the ups and downs of the week.
A friend and I got together for coffee this past week, as we sometimes do, but it devolved into something else entirely; which, it always does.
Across from me in my dining room, he’d sat scribbling on the whiteboard between us. I’d watched with curiosity as he wrote, drumming the side of my coffee mug with my fingers. When he’d gone with the blue dry-erase marker, I’d been forced to swallow a cough-chuckle since I’d have picked the black one, personally, but then I’d wondered why something like that even mattered to me—like, why notice that at all?
Who cares?
Our conversation began with the innocent question “what’s new?” but, in the almost 15 years we’ve known each other, surface-level has never been our thing. Which is also why I’d started telling him about how I’d been feeling stressed lately, more so than usual.
Truth be told, I’d been having a lot of trouble sleeping.
One night earlier in the week, my brain would simply not wind down for bed. It’d been late but, since it was actually doing the total opposite of winding down anyway, I’d tossed the book I’d been reading onto the night stand, thrown on a hoodie, and shuffled my way to the couch. Then I’d plopped down with my laptop and wrote.
This is hard to admit, but I’d been writing about how I’d completely lost faith in my ability to flourish in life. Mostly, that I was worried about my ability to make money and live comfortably, long-term. That the job market was changing and the rat race was becoming a chatbot race, and that I had no interest in racing anyway.
I’d been avoiding actually saying that out loud for quite some time, but it’s been eating me alive… so writing about it felt good.
At first, I almost didn’t tell my friend about all I’d been wrestling with when he’d asked over coffee. It felt pretty doom-and-gloom and, while I desperately wanted to change it, I’m really struggling to feel like I can these days.
When I’d talked to my therapist about it, she’d helped me poke and prod at the whole thing a bit more. I’d sighed at the time, fidgeting with the ring on my left middle finger before looking into the laptop screen and blurting out that I suck at corporate politics and that I loathe self-promotion. She’d seemed somewhat concerned at first but relaxed into something more like amusement when I’d started babbling about how both of those things are prerequisites for climbing the corporate ladder.
“I used to be able to do it,” I’d told her. “And then it kind of broke... and I’ve never really been able to put it back together.”
Without missing a beat, she’d gone “... do you want to?”
Nope.
I sure didn’t.
Sometimes, it’s easy to let the voice in my head convince me that my way of seeing things ruffles feathers—that I’m too much. I ask why. I look for better ways of getting things done. I don’t promise certainty because I know it doesn’t exist. Pretending like it does bothers me a lot. I don’t like dishonesty or manipulation. Posturing and performance theater irk me immensely. And I get frustrated with those who refuse to acknowledge that there’s always more than one way to do things. Everyone thinks their way is the “right” way, which kinda sorta definitely means there is no right way by default, right?
Right.
Rest assured, I know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. Trust me, I get that. I don’t need to be, either... I made my peace with it long ago. But it’s also just become incredibly difficult not to feel like a complete and total outcast altogether. Like, where the hell are my people?? There’s got to be somewhere that I fit.
That’s when my therapist cut in. She’d still looked amused, but perhaps she’d thought it best to corral us before I launched further down the rabbit hole. Before yielding my time, though, I’d admitted all of what I’d shared was chock full of limiting beliefs. She’d agreed with sort of a “well duh” expression, to which I’d nodded my appreciation.
All to say, I know these things can be untangled and defused. Logically, at least. But more and more it’s felt like I’ve completely lost the ability to believe flourishing’s an option for me. So, lately, it’s taking that much more effort to neutralize those thoughts.
And I’m fucking tired.
It’s not like my friend and I’d gotten together for coffee in order to chat about any of that stuff, though.
I’m actually pretty wary of foisting emotional baggage upon the people in my life these days. That wasn’t always the case, and I think I even overcorrected for a while by sharing too little of myself. But my friend had asked how I was doing and when I’d paused before saying “meh, I’m ok”, he’d smiled and followed up with whether I wanted to be heard, held, or helped. And after I’d responded with the truer depth of how things were going, he insisted we bust out the whiteboard to sort through all that I’ve been juggling. Which, by the way, is totally my move... but I hadn’t done it, even though I’d been meaning to for a while.
So when he’d finished writing and looked up, reflecting back all I’d shared with astonishing clarity, all I could do was exhale, smile, and feel grateful.
And this morning, while sitting by the window with a book in my lap, waiting for my coffee to finish brewing, I found myself contemplating whether or not the act of simply recounting all I’d been wrestling with—and naming it clearly— might be why I’d woken up with such ease.
Who knows. But, I trusted myself to share it with the people in my corner instead of tucking it away to fester, and that’s something.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that, actually, it’s everything.
onward.
If you enjoy reading my writing, I publish short reflections like this each day as part of my daily column, Kickturn.
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