When Life Overflows

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Photo Credit: Kelly Sikkema from Unsplash


The other day I was talking to my very close friend, let's call her Calico, about a bunch of old memories and feelings from my childhood. It felt so good just to get it out of my brain and into a space where she could help me discern if they were normal or not. At one point I looked up from my firehose of emotions and she hit me with a very honest sentence, "I don't know how to respond. I don't know how to help." She felt powerless when, in fact, the sheer act of listening to me and reaffirming that it isn't ok to be treated so poorly was the best help I had received in years. To feel heard and not to feel discounted.


I think that's a subtle but life changing point that people can easily miss the importance of. I grew up receiving a weekly dose of emotional abuse, and I am in the process of taking the tangled memories and thoughts back out of my head and trying to make sense of it with grown eyes, instead of the eyes of a child who was taught everything was her fault. But the world often discounts the power of someone listening, and helping to remind me, when my own head gets too clouded and dark, that while the anxiety and depression is my responsibility to work with, that they are the scars of something that is not my fault.

So, even when things are rough, I sometimes need to take a moment to feel grateful for the people who may feel like they don't know how to help, but are there anyway. To sit with you as you examine your mental tangles, and to be ballast in your storm in a bid to keep you upright. They do more than I can ever express gratefulness for, just by being a part of my present.

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