The paths

Emily Writes Weekly

Yesterday, I fell asleep on my friend’s chest as my two other friends laughed and chatted around us. I know why I fell asleep there - despite the noise. It’s because I felt safe, warm, and content.

These last few months have been so difficult. I have felt afraid, lonely, overwhelmed and anxious. With whānau in Australia, I’ve watched powerless as the country I was born in, and the people I grew up with, suffered wave after wave of Covid 19.

I have been terrified that my whānau would catch it as I know there’s nothing I can do from here. I can’t see them. I can’t help them.

I have been awed by the shared commitment that my chosen home Aotearoa has had to keeping people safe. Overwhelmingly, people mask up, scan in, wash hands, and get vaccinated. It is that dedication that has helped me to keep going.

A few months ago, I confirmed with my friends something they already knew. I was struggling with my anxiety a lot. There is something so beautiful about long held friendships - time physically together doesn’t matter as much as the deep knowing of what the people you love need.

My friends have a way of knowing me that is the deepest comfort in my darkest times.

They sprung into action and helped me clear my room and get my life into a bit more order. But more than that - they popped over for lunch with bread rolls and avocado and chips and dip. They picked me up and took me to their homes for child-free time. They sent me memes I’d laugh at. They reminded me that I am loved. That I am safe. That I have everything I need in them and in my whānau.

I can be afraid, anxious, feel lost - and I can be comforted by knowing that right now, in this moment, I have enough.

Enough isn’t everything. That’s not what it’s about.

I think for many of us that grew up with scarcity of any kind (whatever that may be - love, safety, material things) there are generally two paths you can end up heading down - one is an endless and ultimately pointless search for those things you didn’t have, the other is a feeling that our kete is small so it is filled easily.

I know what contentment feels like. I just need to hold the feeling of it when the black dog growls at my door. That’s the part I struggle with.

When the anxiety rises and I start to feel my body ache in fear, I need to conjure up the feeling I have when my partner holds me, when my children are laughing, when I break bread with my friends and we share silly TikTok videos.

As I write this, I can hear my son’s audiobook. He is lying on the carpet listening to it with his eyes closed. The wind is howling and I am safe and warm. Bruce purrs beside me. I can hear Eddie’s shrieking laughter as he plays Roblox with two friends online - “DUDE! Did you see that!” I can smell roast veges cooking upstairs. My husband is listening to a podcast as he potters around the kitchen. On my phone, my friends are far but near, sharing memes, clips from articles, Instagram links and bits of normal life. A storm is raging outside, but inside I am warm. I am safe. I am content.

I am satisfied here if I just stop and feel it all.

After these two years of Covid 19 I feel as if I’m somehow learning more toward feeling these feelings. Always, at the back of my mind, sitting next to my fears, is a thrumming grateful recognition for what we have escaped so far. It feels impossible not to look at the horror overseas and be unmoved. To see it and not feel indebted to all who have saved us.

Still, I feel like we’re all back in that scarcity mindset again and there’s those of us awash with gratitude for what our little kete holds and those of us who just want more and more. Two paths.

And if you can’t ever be satisfied, you can’t ever be content. And if you can’t ever be content - how do you ever feel safe?

There are protestors today in the cold. I doubt they feel very safe and I’m sure it’s been a long time since they’ve felt content. I feel it will be an even longer wait for them…

Because if you can’t find any gratitude or peace in your life - if life is just a treadmill of wanting and needing more and more - of course the never-enough-of-it-all would crush you.

And if you can’t even find peace in the arms of your friends, in the lap of those who know you so well and love you anyway - how exhausted you must be.

How devastating to always look for confirmation that this world is heavy with cruelty and then to want to perpetuate that over and over again to further solidify its presence in your life. How awful to want to stain every human interaction with cruelty to validate your view that we’re all just worthless.

I am glad I don’t feel that way. I’m glad that the anxiety I have comes from a place of deep care, even if it renders me useless a lot of the time.

I don’t want to ever head down that other path. So, when the knowledge that I could become lost feels too close for comfort, I must remember the three truths of where I am right now in this very moment.

I am safe.

I am warm.

I am loved.

And I must hold onto that so I can keep the cold at bay.

The path is long, fraught, frightening - but there is hope here, and love. And it’s enough.