No, thank you.

Say yes. Say yes to catching up with a friends, to new opportunities and endless possibilities. Say yes to meeting people, strange people - circus level people - that stretch your mind and make you see in new colours. A yes to one event, leads you to the another, and suddenly it's 5am and you're watching one man stack hats on-top of another man's head while the latter tells you to wait for the microwave to beep before opening the door. Say yes to uncomfortable and you'll see yourself thrive, and don't forget to say hello as people start to walk over you.

Being a 'yes' person felt like a positive thing to do. Starting off my career, I wanted to look confident, trustworthy and up for any task. But then I kept saying yes. Even when I was running teams, I still lived for a second of recognition of how many 'plates I could spin'. Even when I was drowning, if my boss would ask 'can you look at this for me', what do you suppose the answer was?

It's a problem, this yes stuff. At first I thought it was because I'm a woman. We're seemingly programmed to be accommodating and eager to please. At some point we were told we would need to work harder too, that being a woman is tough so you've got to be tougher. I don't know who told us this - was it Disney or Beyonce? But then I saw other women say they were 'at capacity and simply couldn't take this task on', or that they could do it but the manager would need to 'reprioritise their existing tasks to meet the deadline'. It all looked so easy, it made so much sense. So why when I was asked the same question, I mouth still formed Y.E.S.

Where might have started this response? Thinking back to my parents, they had a strange relationship of neither love nor hate, not warm but nor uncaring. It was two people who needed each other but made of completely different matter. So there were fights, ones that lasted weeks and felt like the cold war. Things unspoken, swept under the rug. The catalyst for it all could be the tiniest thing, a word that triggered a secret held - like 'liar'. And so I learned to be careful about what I said, and my feet were light enough to glide on eggshells. And after seventeen years I was a chronic people-pleaser.

By the end of 2020 this looked like weight gain, acne (at twenty-nine years old) and a breakdown on my bathroom floor. Weeks of pressure and deadlines had finally over-boiled, and a tiny thought consumed every cell of my body - that it would be easier if it were all just over. And do you know what talked me away from this thought? In planning my demise I tried to find a solution that would be the least bothersome.

1. I'll drop my dog off to my dad's house.

2. Then I'll leave a note on my car that it needs to be delivered to my mum.

3. I'll find a nice beach at sunset.

...But what of the poor soul that finds me?

When I spoke to a counsellor about these thoughts a week later, I recognised that it was not just that my partner had said he wouldn't want to be with me if I continued like this, or the event where I lost my temper. It was the inability to say no a million times before that night. It was choosing the welfare of others over the wellness of myself.

And so in this New Year I must reset to survive. I am currently unemployed and living with my partner's parents. I am preparing to leave the safety of Australia to go to one of the most infectious places in the world, London. I have sold pretty all of my things, and strangely have the most money I've ever had in my life. Other people in my life cannot understand and are constantly sharing their fear with me. They do not understand that their security is my fear, and that I was already dying, slowly.

So I implore you to say this word, the darkness to the light. I invite you to say yes when there is opportunity to for growth, but consider the binary. This year I hope when it is right for you that you will say no, thank you.