“Just making her own class now,” our trainer joked.
To be fair, I was.
On Monday, I showed up to my usual 7 a.m. Legs, Bums, and Tums class. However, I’ve been nursing a sore hip for almost a week, rendering the “legs” portion impossible if I wished to save it from further injury. Instead, I completely mitigated my predicament by constructing an apropos “Arms” portion in lieu of legs.
We all had a laugh at my expense, which I loved. Laughter. Camaraderie.
You see, for most of my life, I’ve known the intimacy of being on my own. As an only child, my imagination ran wild. Entertaining yourself is an art, and I was quite good at it.
Part of me craved this intimacy, of having my privacy and solitude. But the other part of me,
the quiet, sensitive part,
craved companionship. I found it in after school clubs, at youth group, and at dance. It was a subtle balance, a coming and going of attention and the affinity for space.
But then a shift occurred. When I became ill in my mid 20’s, solitude soured. Alone time became my prison, my life succumbed to the demanding nature of my condition.
An entire year was spent in a guest suite at my mother’s home far away from any other friends or family. Quarantine essentially, only I was a solo participant. Everyone else basked in the freedom I so longed to taste; this caged bird screaming. It felt surreal, loneliness cementing itself like a headstone, and I the grave.
As I got better, I (slowly) integrated back into society. To this day, it’s still a daunting task. I was once looked at like a zoo animal. No amount of detergent or therapy can expunge that from my nervous system. Nonetheless, I come alive when given the chance to mingle with the right crowd — to not be constantly on my own.
Right now, the gym and my running group have been my experiment, training my introverted primary state to dabble in extroversion. I have cultivated pockets of safe space, silly inside jokes, and have even gained friendships that feel organic and genuine. It’s exciting, especially as a foreigner — to this country and to myself. My body has never felt like my own in years, but I’m learning to embrace her natural state since coming off my biologic injections at the end of October.
But now, turbulence has struck. It’s like seeing someone construct a meticulous track of dominos and a slight breeze strolls through. You see the dominos teeter. You hold your breath.
Before Monday morning, a myriad of instances occurred. I hurt my hip, so running was out during my usual social Thursday night jaunt. Then, Friday consisted of passive and undermining emails from certain professionals that were supposed to be championing my health condition, as well as being stuck in a two hour documentary screening of The Art of Killing (which was highly triggering — centered around torture and reenactments of killings). Saturday I sat out of another running event due to said injury, as well as spent most of the day resting my hip, worrying over dissertation preparations, and foreboding the ghosting that would most likely occur the following day. I had been chatting to someone for an entire week, consistent communication and intrigue, but Saturday was suddenly zero contact. Another J.O.S. in the digital dating world.
I awoke Sunday morning to a text from this someone. Cancelled. I have horrible trust issues from past relationships (again, detergent and therapy…) and was wading in the heaviness of the past few days. Dissertation. Deplorable dating. Deathly images. Disappointment. A dislodging from beloved activities.
It was the shepherd’s pie of PTSD. I could feel my body sinking into my mattress, swallowed into my own Elm Street. My four poster bed quickly becoming those four walls of my mother’s guest suite.
But an angel came to the rescue. In August, I filmed a meet up here in Edinburgh with other TSW individuals for my project, Still Preventable. Eilidh, my dear, gorgeous, kind-hearted Scottish treasure of a human, was one of the attendees. She’s not only someone who understands this shepherd’s pie recipe, but knows the loss of a long-standing relationship and the complications of our 21st century dating culture.
Like a knight in her shining baby Yaris, she took me on the date I’d planned with J.O.S.
Honestly, her gracious distraction become more than just that. No stranger could have afforded me the warmth and joy of real, unadulterated friendship. We moseyed around Rosslyn, had a wee picnic discussing the intricacies of life, our futures, and her charming dating life (girlllllll), plus made it out to Portobello to watch my running group booty bounce up and down the promenade for yet another event. But even though I couldn’t join in, I was in.
I had Eilidh.
I had the sea.
I had a cohort of gorgeous humans celebrating the act of living.
Community is a such powerful antidote in mental health. In resilience research, individuals who go and reach out for support by binding to a purpose or group with shared interests is categorically more likely to deal better with hardships, setbacks, and deviation than someone muscling through alone. (Cross your fingers on my PhD funding… it would be in this research!)
The people you surround yourself with are important. The FOMO hits hard sometimes, not because of the activity necessarily, but because of the individuals. It’s how they support you in your endeavors; how they add to your peace. How they show up. The alchemy in this type of bond is a serendipitous kiss from the universe. She is always looking out for us, even when it doesn’t feel like it.
So find your tribe. Love them ferociously. It will always and forever be the company, above all, that you remember in this life. Not the journey or even the destination…
the company.
P.S. I matched with someone else on a dating app this weekend. His first sentence to me was over how hard my name is for an English man to pronounce. Pray for me. (I laughed out loud writing this.)
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