Lessons for a new year

This time of year is such a strange intersection.

The last echoes of the holiday period still ring while the new year crashes in, full of manic, youthful energy.

Routine returns, but something still remembers…

What happened there, in that gap between one year and the next?

In that bruising time with family.

In those moments of staring into the middle distance of your life, wondering what could be different next year.

For a certain kind of sensitive cat, “The Holidays” are a yearly ritual in self-tenderization.

But tender rituals bring tender lessons - ones I don’t want to forget as the calendar wheels turn.

So what did I come out with?

(These lessons are just for me but see what they spark for you…)

…

I spent Christmas in New Zealand. 

My first trip home in three years. 

Two weeks of forest hikes and beach swims (fuck yes) titrated just right to balance out two weeks with my crazy family (love them, still crazy.)

The hikes are a daily chance to be with only myself and the land. A much-needed reunion.

The beach swims are transcendent.

At nearly 40 I discover a brand new skill: that I can simply float on my back in the ocean, with no effort. I lie this way for short-but-timeless stretches, the waves rocking me gently. The ocean holding me like a forgotten mother.

Why have I not been doing this every day of my life?

Lesson One: Find the ocean, wherever you can. Get in.

…

On this trip I have with me a special book.

A sacred text (though I didn’t know this when I packed it). 

Leslie Becker-Phelps’ Insecure In Love, a book whose name and cover (a velvet heart on a red satin sheet) do not inspire my confidence. 

And yet it is quietly life-changing.

She describes what she calls the “invisible known” -- the belief you hold deep in your heart, but can only half admit to. 

I’m reading this book because I have been struggling in my relationship. 

In truth, I have been struggling in all my relationships, for as long as I can remember. 

My invisible known is the belief that I am - at my core - not good enough. That I am not worthy of love.

Reading this book, I learn about how this one simple belief shapes my every interaction. How it all seems so logical from the inside.

If I am not worthy of love… then if someone says they love me… they’re either mistaken, or they’re lying.

If they’re mistaken, I can’t let them see the real me. (Love is pressure. Intolerable.)

If they’re lying, I can’t trust anyone, especially those closest to me, because they are the biggest deceivers. (Love is a minefield. Excruciating.)

With my hand on my heart I read, not just learning but feeling the years of pain this belief has brought me. The ways I had to learn to navigate big feelings (my own, and other people’s) from such a young age. And the possibility that things could change.

Lesson Two: Read books you’re embarrassed to be seen with. Read them late into the night.

…

I start documenting moments when my invisible known shapes the way I interpret an interaction. 

Within a day I already have a long and growing list.

We’re having a “pre-Christmas Day”, so part of my family can join us before they head out of town. The house is full and loud. I’ve deeply enjoyed reconnecting with my people, but eventually I need a break, guiltily slinking off to my room. 

It’s an oasis of calm, but after a while the guilt propels me back to the action. My sister asks, “are you okay?”

I freeze. 

The thought, ‘Fuck! She noticed I was gone!’

Then another thought: ‘Aha! The invisible known!’

Through the lens of ‘I’m not good enough’, my decision to go and rest for a bit during an all-day family gathering can only ever be a shameful decision. My need for a break can only be a failing, a symptom of what a not-good-enough person I am.

Through that lens, when my sister asks “are you okay?”, I instead hear “what’s wrong with you, where have you been??”

Per the book’s instructions, I note this down on my list, along with a ‘counter-interpretation’ of her question:

“She’d noticed I was gone, and was genuinely wondering if I was okay.”

I don’t fully believe this counter-interpretation, of course. But it’s enough to write it down. The possibility that my first thought isn’t the only interpretation provides a bit of breathing room.

With this breathing room, I begin to notice other family members taking mini-breaks of their own.

Throughout the day, I keep updating my list. 

Lesson Three: Keep noticing how ‘I’m not good enough’ is shaping your interactions. Write it down. (Just doing this much is surprisingly useful!)

…

The family flare ups begin.

I find myself in a familiar role: easing the tension. 

I listen one-on-one, after the flare ups. My family is great at one-on-one.

But get us all together and the tension can fill the room, soundless, like a gas.

I’m good at easing tension, and a part of me still wants to do it. I care deeply about these people I’ve known forever, my fellow travellers in the universe. I don’t want them to be upset with one another.

But another part of me is tired. 

It says, ‘I’m good at this because I’ve been doing it my whole life.’

I make a new rule for myself. When I see a flare up approaching, I won’t ignore it. I won’t try to pretend this canary isn’t struggling to breathe in the coal mine.

I’ll get up and leave the room. I’ll go find another beach that needs my attention. 

Lesson Four: You don’t have to stick around when you’re uncomfortable. You don’t have to fix other people’s feelings to be safe. (No one is asking you to do this.)

…

On the real Christmas Day, I’ve been up since 7 (or 5AM by my body clock). 

This wake up time was earnestly negotiated with my niece the night before (a vast improvement from her opening position of ‘HOW ABOUT I WAKE YOU UP AS SOON AS I WAKE UP??!!’).

We’ve had a cute time opening presents, discussing Santa’s movements. But as we sit down to the delicious breakfast my mum has made I realise I am feeling desperately sad. 

My girlfriend isn’t here. My life is a confusing mess. And everyone is wearing paper hats.

I do not want to wear a paper hat when I am feeling this sad.

And so now I’m in a shame spiral, trying to smile…

I manage to excuse myself, mumbling something about going for a walk. ‘A walk’ turns into another forest hike, another beach swim. I am nervous I’m being rude but I call my mum from the road and she says ‘we don’t have any more plans until dinner so go for it’.

The hike and the swim are exactly what I need, plus one key element.

On the drive there and back I listen to a Phoebe Bridgers song on repeat. It captures everything about this moment so perfectly, I cry listening to it. But this time I don’t feel shame about my sadness. As Phoebe sings:

“You don’t have to be alone to be lonesome

It’s so easy to forget

But sadness comes crashing like a brick through the window

And it’s Christmas so no one can fix it.

The desire for annihilation 

Is as common as it is unkind

And it’s hard to recognise the situation

When you’re desperately trying to have a good time.”

By the time I get back, I’m able to join in again and mean it. I have a genuinely nice time.

Lesson Four: The right song can make room for the biggest feelings. (Save this one for your next Christmas, folks.)

Phoebe gets it

…

There’s much more from this intense trip home. 

My ‘lessons’ roll into larger epiphanies - about myself, my past, my future.

At one point, literally everyone in my family is losing their bundle at one another. (Christmas is hard for everyone.)

I text my girlfriend and say “Everyone is losing their bundle today except me. Maybe I’m not the sensitive one??”

I wonder if each of them is dealing with their own invisible known, one way or another, and what that’s like for them.

I also manage to have big one-on-one chats with each of my parents, where they listen to me talk about my life, genuinely curious about what I’ve been navigating lately.

We’re great one-on-one…

…

On my last night I try to capture the biggest of these epiphanies in writing. It comes out raw, but feels desperately important.

I write about the stress my family had to deal with, from as far back as I can remember. The stress that so many families deal with. Shared challenges that forge our bonds but also leave a mark on each of us, in unique yet ever-entwined ways.

I think about my parents’ experience. There’s so much they had to deal with in their own childhoods that they managed to protect me from. But stress and trauma echo through generations.

We each have to make our adjustments, our big lessons, and for each one of us they are the lessons of a lifetime. Working on our own invisible knowns.

My journal entry ends: “I am so grateful for my family. I carry so much of what they’ve taught me. But I can’t carry everything they gave me. The heaviest things I must now put down. (This is the work of each generation.)"

…

When I’m back home, I will read some of what I write here to my girlfriend and we will both cry.

She is seeing the shift in me, the lessons I’ve been learning.

I will keep tracking my invisible known, that belief that says ‘I’m not good enough’ (a belief that just maybe might be mistaken). 

And in the weeks to come I will feel that shift myself. In the way I relate to myself, in the room I make for others (including my family) to see me - the real me, the one that gets sad on Christmas, the one that is so sure that his own tender needs simply can’t be acceptable (or can they…?).

I even make it to the beach again, multiple times. 

(Even if Melbourne beaches can’t really hold a candle to New Zealand’s.)

I will keep journaling my lessons and trying to hold on to the best ones as this new year beds in. This is the work of a lifetime.

…

That’s all. Click here and let me know what you think?

— Graham