Awhi

Well, babies, I’m not going to lie to you, it’s been a pretty insane week, and not in a way that involves strippers and hot tubs, I’m sorry to report. Work absolutely blew up, friends freaked out, I had a small lasagna-related breakdown in the Mt. Vic New World last night, I have been talking about nothing but Relationships for the past seventy-two hours, I lost my phone card in the wilderness of complete filth that is my room, I’m missing friends and family all over the world, I am in complete denial about leaving Wellington, I’m having a hard time eating (me!), and my computer and camera problems remain, to say the least, unresolved. This week has been all about the draaaaaaama, man, and I am just so exhausted right now. I have been laying on the couch reading depressing speculative fiction for the past two hours and drinking tea, and I’m just waiting for it to get dark enough to get into bed and go to sleep, figuring I better quit while I’m ahead because no new crises have popped up in the past eight or so hours.

I exaggerate, slightly, because of course in the grand scheme of life everything is fine. Well, not about work blowing up; I have never had such a difficult time, clinically speaking, as I did on Thursday and Friday. When you call the acute mental health service at the hospital about a client and they call you back to ask how you’re doing, you begin to devoutly wish you were using a time machine to go back to your fantastic Christmas from last year instead of dreading what the next day at work. When your friends who are struggling themselves take one look at you and go “What happened?” you know that it’s going to take more than one cup of tea to get back to your normal slightly ridiculous fuzzy-headed happy-go-lucky equilibrium.

Tuesday night I was out to dinner with a couple of friends, and we were talking, OF COURSE, about boys, and Stormy went, “I have to tell you, when I first met you, it was really clear to me that you have some pretty serious barriers up.” I kind of laughed at it at the time,—please, girl! My life, it is the open book!—but later when we were walking home I told him that I kind of got what he meant but that I wasn’t sure, exactly, where those barriers were. He told me he thought that I have some pretty serious walls up re: The Boys, and I said that that was sort of in contrast to my recent, very welcome revelation, that Single For The Foreseeable Future= A-OK. He said maybe there were other things that I wasn’t allowing myself to experience, to accept, and I said I didn’t know, maybe he was right, whatever.

But then, Thursday night, Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday, as I got progressively more tense and felt like I had to put out one fire after another—someone got his heart broken by a no-good worthless scumbag of a man! Someone handed me my first child protection case at 3:30 on the Friday before everyone at work goes on holiday! Someone broke her foot and that’s going to affect Christmas! Someone miscalculated what dinner for twelve would cost and decided to go shopping with three other control freaks after not having eaten for seven hours and had to put back half the cart because the backpackers can’t afford her luscious improvised holiday menu! And oh yeah, there was an earthquake!–I noticed something kind of awesome, and that was people were caring for me. Friends were reminding me to drink tea and eat chocolate, my mom was sending me reassuring emails, co-workers were telling me about the backup I can get over the holidays and telling me how grateful they were that I was there to show awhi (a te reo Maori word for “caring”) for our clients. It was really nice. It was really nice. It was, for reasons I don’t completely understand, a little unexpected.

And…and it was a real struggle to accept. I felt acutely uncomfortable and awkward, nodding my head and saying thank you over and over. I have a lot—a lot–of wonderful people in my life, all of whom are fun and good-looking and awesome conversationalists, and they’re good listeners and care about me and so on and so forth, but somehow I don’t really expect that they’ll notice that I’m struggling, all evidence to the contrary. I am a born social worker, a born therapist, and I just automatically assume that it’s me that people will come to for an ear, a hug, a text message just to check in. I’m not trying to make it out that I’m sort of selfless martyr or something—I’m not trying to impress you with how gosh-darned giving I am–because pretty much nothing could be further from the truth, as those of you who know me will readily attest. Disclaimers aside, though, I have to say it doesn’t occur to me very often that people will turn around and do that for me; I don’t often give that credit where it is richly and obviously due.

So I did what people often do with me, all week, all weekend: apologized profusely for bothering them, for being weak, for needing help. And they did what I always do when people say those kinds of me: ridiculed me gently for thinking that I was being a bother, told me they cared about me, told me that I needed to take care of myself. And that’s where I realized what Stormy was talking about, when he said it’s clear I have barriers in my life, in my heart. I am not very good at admitting that I sometimes need support and care from the good good people in my life, and that those good people will give it to me, free of charge. I am always surprised when people love me back.

But if I can’t get it together to accept, very well, people’s care and consideration of me, at least I have the sense to be grateful. I could care less about Christmas this year, but I am thankful for all the people who make my world, who take care of each other and help each other stay human: my true loves, my family, my reason for being.