“How are you doing? This is a lot to carry.”

Ever been asked a question and you just kind of chew on the words, gnawing at what to answer, how deep or honest a response to give?  Sure, there are times when a “Fine, how are you?” covers the polite necessities, you hand over your cash and you leave with your milk. The answer to “Can you do me a favour?” can wildly escalate out of control depending on your asker, your blood sugar levels, traffic noise, the history clogging the air between you, any given to-do list and, some days, the unknown location of Pluto in relation to the apogee of the messiness of your kitchen.

How to answer a question is a loaded battleship, sometimes. You know you’ve taken a hit and are taking on water (hull breach! On bilge pumps!) but things are under control on SS Everything is FINE Thanks, or your thoughts are floppy meat puppets spilling into the void of space and no return and… what was the question again?

It’s not that difficult for me to go sit and hug my friends when their life is burning down. But when my days are engulfed in heat and disaster? It can be terrifying to open my mouth. Not because I don’t trust my friends, but because I don’t want to burden them, or freak them out with how badly I’m actually coping with this catastrophe, that it will forever damage our friendship when they see yet again and THIS time that I’m an actual human being with less superpowers than advertised, and more issues. WAY more issues. And the onset of dragon scale on one elbow which just won’t drown under the deluge of lotion and curses… Any combination of those reasons, and a whole lot more, have stopped me sharing before, and still give me significant pause when I’m feeling particularly abject, furious or a nuclear combination of unidentified threats and worries.

“How are you doing? This is a lot to carry.”

My best friends, the ones I am closest to in heart space not distance, are those that ask the simple questions and wait. The wide-hearted women who send their feelings to curl around mine, hugs wrapped in emails and question marks. Long-eared women who hear the wrong note in my expression, in my silence, who miss the music of me in their feed, their texts, their ordinary days. The women in waiting, holding space for me in their lives, their arms and thoughts and prayers, waiting for me to answer, waiting to settle down next to me in the ashes.

Friendship is like a handful. Some days your cupped hands can’t hope to hold the sun drenched raspberries and porch swings that are offered, but your friend holds that out to you for you to take, physics be damned – and it happens, easily and glorious. Sometimes you are the one holding out the light, the brownies, the tissues and understanding, in loving hands cupped like cool cotton pillows against a fevered, aching head.

Sometimes we have laughter and sunrises, baklava and mint that we cannot help but shove into our friends’ pockets and afternoons, giddy with abundance. Sometimes there’s nothing in our hands, empty and reaching, to find our fingers are glued by sweat, ash and tears to the pounding, fervent grasp of our friends.

“How are you doing? This is a lot to carry.”

Sometimes, at our darkest, we have the opportunity to limp up to our friends, hands extended, eyes caught on the mess that we carry. Fury that has carved canyons, leaking down to our elbows. Hopes crusted under our fingernails, disasters dripping between our knuckles. Bruised, bloody faith lying dazed and crooked in the crease of our palms, sorrows, troubles and unknowns balanced so precariously, so grievously, before us.

Before us. This is what we carry, wanting someone with eyes to see. To see not just the mess we are carrying in this moment, but the strain it’s placed on our shoulders, the tension-singing cables strung between our burden and our hearts, how we can’t catch our breath or wipe our nose or work out if we’re failing spectacularly or just by an impressive amount, all things considered.

Being friends is complicated. Sometimes to help is human, to friend divine. It’s harder for me to let my friends see the reality of my struggles, my insecurities and splotchy humanity. To hold out the unhappy disaster just as honestly as the jubilation and satisfaction. To let them be a friend to me, in my aches and sorrows.

“Wow, that’s a mess. That’s gotta hurt,” friends say. “That is a lot to carry. Tell me about it.” Throwing handfuls of love around like oxygen, like a hand-knotted blankets of comfort, like grenades of empathy blowing away our defences, confident that we can bear to look at each other’s burdens and emerge, eventually, with hands raised in celebration, dancing.


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