I went to a very fun Christmas party a few days ago. This the kind of party you could stay at for a couple of days-everyone alive and sparling like little ornaments on a Christmas tree. Dancing, carousing, telling secrets, stepping outside of themselves through a combination of the goodness of the holidays looming and potent crantinis being poured with seasonal recklessness.
So many interesting people filled the room. Years of asking how people are when you see them makes you want to really listen to the answer. Few people have the courage, especially at this time of the year, to answer honestly.
We want to be seen a certain way; happy, engaged, beautiful, alive, successful, wanted. All of it. Married people have a pressure too- only it is different. I am not sure that they have to defy gravity, accounting and age the way us single folk do.
Anyway I was catching up with a divorced friend I rarely see and I was asking her how she was. Really.
She said
” I am ok.”
So honest.
I looked at the expression on her face. Okay was clearly a euphemism for being dragged behind an SUV on a gravel road.
I said “Tell me”
She told me of her difficulties. She said “you know, I want to answer honestly and quite frankly I am not sure I could fake the emotions of these days, but at the same time I really don’t want to be seen as the angry beaver.
Oh yes, we all know if we let the angry beaver out of the cage she may take over.
Brilliant. (Funny). Honest. Raw.
I toast you. You know who you are.
It will get better. xxx
