Honestly, my hair is a mess right now. I have fine hair and when I forget to brush it, all of a sudden I have knots the size of fists. But isn’t that fitting? Like I’m being beat up by my own head. This is how it feels to be overwhelmed with so much in our lives and with the world. Hair sometimes seems silly to think about in times like this, but when you abandon your body’s needs, like I’ve done, it only gets worse, and then suddenly you have no time for anything else but brushing out knots, day after day like an immortal witch (I imagine) with hair longer than her village, and even though she’s immortal, she spends all her time brushing the dreads out of her hair, horrible knots which keep punching her in the face. If only she had taken care of it.
Alright, fine, I’ll brush my hair. I promise.
I fear my chronic pain makes me unrelatable. (Even though I know it’s not true.) I said my fear aloud while I was writing you this letter: I fear my chronic pain makes me unrelatable. Every sentence I wrote found its way onto the topic of pain and disability and grief. I would tell you something about me, and then I’d realize this is an experience related to being invisibly disabled. And I’d think, who wants to hear about suffering? I’d back-track what I was trying to say. I don’t want to be bleak all the time.
I had coffee with a friend yesterday morning. I sipped an iced matcha latte with oat milk from a paper straw and ate a mushroom empanada, and a glazed donut, while we talked. We were chatting about how pride and culture can get in the way of a person asking for help, can stop a person from being vulnerable with a loved one, never sharing what they’re going through.
My friend said: You have to give people a chance to show up for you. I agreed with them. And yet we both related on the topic of being the listeners in our relationships, instead of being the one’s to seek out emotional support from close ones as much. I privately concluded they were doing better in that area than I was, which I found encouraging.