Brave Faces, Made of Lies

By the time August 2021 became September, I had completed a number of tasks, and moved through a series of events, that changed my life completely. Each one, alone, was a gamechanger; cumulatively, they amounted to a significant shift in the landscaping of my existence.

I had a few weeks of wrangling, tying up of loose ends, legal paperwork, government bureaucracy and immense personal upheaval. My personal status on several levels shifted irrevocably. Professional changes, family changes, shifting sands transforming the familiar into the foreign; I had major surgery - one that, ultimately, without hyperbole, meant nothing would ever be the same again.

Every fragment of my life as I had come to know it, I watched shatter around me, every tiny shard further exploding in slow motion into another thousand pieces. With every change I saw happening, my heart simultaneously broke, and yet, was healed again. While it is absolutely necessary and natural, this accelerated and continuous cycle of breaking and making, is draining. The changes are not hard in themselves; it's the transition. Every step is in the right direction, but that does not make the cumulative footfall painless. It's like running through fire to reach a placid lake that isn't yet quite in sight. Yet, I had to keep believing it was there, on the other side, always within my reach.

For every moment I felt the breathlessness of fear or the stabbing ache of self-doubt, there was an hour where I knew that complete resolution and gained strength will be the legacy of the chapter. That does not mean that those moments did not exist, and just because they hadn't entirely overwhelmed me, didn't mean they weren't excruciatingly overwhelming.

My resolution is not to smile through it blithely, and falsify joy in place of pain. Brave faces, stiff upper lips, and chins up - they are nothing but lies. Lies to those we love, and lies to ourselves. We must feel many awful, painful, things in order to navigate life, and change, and our own humanity. It really is ok not to be ok, and to express ourselves as such. Every agony is finite, every corner will be turned.

But there are days, where it nearly feels like too much, where the doubt penetrates that little deeper, and the fear grasps, cold-fingered, right inside my throat. Days where I can't even remember my own advice, let alone take it, and I have no more strength to smile.

They are days (as it is with all days) that always end. Days where I realise that nothing lasts forever, in every possible way. If it hurts, if it's pain, if it's fear or doubt or sadness, then even that will end, too. Change is forward movement, and every moment is change. Nothing in any space will last forever. Seasons turn, racing through a familiar cycle. Life begets death.

Taking a single pause, a moment of waiting - sometimes that is all it takes to move through agony. Simply keeping trust that a situation can, and will change. Not forcing a smile. Not pretending all is well. Just clinging to each singular breath, holding it within my chest, and believing the innate truth that everything can, and it will, be different again. Even when my brain cannot accept the thought that recovery is possible, even when solutions seem impossible, evasive, or non-existent, even when hardship comes with stigma, I refuse to crush myself with the pretence of a thousand social expectations. The smile will happen again, when it is time, but forcing it will only delay my ability to recover truthfully.

Nothing lasts forever.

I promise myself I will keep breathing until this, too, has passed. If I can wait, I can survive.