March 20, 2021

If I was to put my head down here awhile and cry, would you sit quiet and just let me? If I was to tell you that my back hurts and my elbows are painful – would you just sit quiet and not offer any exercise or supplement advice? If I tell you my stomach hurts, my intestines sting, my bladder is overactive – would you just listen and not lecture me on what I am doing wrong, what I should be doing, what I should be checking? If I tell you I just feel depressed and weighted – would you nod, keep sewing your quilt and just allow me to express it – give no advice, just be? Not tell me to go to the doctor – because you understand that my body has been through some things that has made any doctor’s visit make me feel ill, embarrassed? Would you not ask why again, and just hold that? Would you just say amazing if I were to share that I am letting my body just age as it does, that I accept that it is entering the last third? The last quarter? 

Would you accept that I just feel low sometimes – and that’s OK? Would you let me complain and whine and just pour me another cup and just go back to threading your needle with that new colour? Would you listen in silence as I rant about being battered down by work, not because it is over-busy but because I feel uninspired and can’t focus? Would you allow me to mix my metaphors? Listen as I whine about feeling like my optic nerves have clamps on them when I stare at the work laptop and that I feel like I need to put a lid on the myself constantly? Like I am not fully me? But that there are tiny glimpses of radiant light that keep me going? Would you allow me to complain without reminding me to be grateful? Would you allow me to pout?

To despair that my energy for my project is low? That I fear I can’t write, I can’t draw and that I am irrelevant?

Would you put your sewing down for a second and reach out and pat my hand, and smile with silent acceptance? Bring me shortbread and check that my coffee is hot? Look around the apartment and smile – knowing all is well. You don’t need to remind me of that because you know I already know this and that ranting is OK. That I just need to without judgment, without advice, without making me feel like me aging, me aching, that if I got sick would be all my fault – that I would make everyone else feel bad as a result? 

You would just let me rant until I lay my head down again and cried – and you wouldn’t try to fix – just let me cry. Knowing I don’t owe you, or you, or you, or you, or you, or you, or even me, anything. Nothing. I can be expanding, decaying, aching, despairing as much as I need to. It doesn’t matter. None of it does. You would just keep sewing. A gentle smile on your face. Look out and smile at the cairn terrier walking in the lane. At the geese honking on the roof top. At the cat walking across the road, at the raccoon scuttling, avoiding the crows. At the blossoms. The wind. And I would just blubber till I’m done. Done. And we’d both quietly sew, with achy fingers. In gratitude.