Everybody feels the wind blow.

The Guardian of Lon­don has an occa­sional col­umn, anonymised, called Diary of a Sep­a­ra­tion.  (They have lots of won­der­ful fea­tures columns, the way few Amer­i­can papers do, any­more.  It’s really a won­der­ful paper.)  This week’s was par­tic­u­larly good, as she talked about her own fears of the future, her self-image, and then– this bit, right here:

“Are you really OK? You look a bit …” he trails off and raises an eyebrow.

There’s some­thing about that ques­tion, from him, the real con­cern in it, that engulfs me in unman­age­able emo­tion, a wash of sad­ness I had no idea I was feel­ing. Sud­denly, I’m blink­ing back tears. There really isn’t any­thing ter­ri­bly wrong: life just seems quite hard at the moment, and some­times a lit­tle sym­pa­thy is a dan­ger­ous thing.

I attempt a casual shrug.

“Ah, I don’t know. I’m just feel­ing really, really old. And look­ing really old,” I add. I rub my eyes with feigned tired­ness, to get rid of the tears, the heel of my hand grind­ing into the thin skin under my eyes. When I look back at him, I feel exposed, vulnerable.

I can’t say how many times I’ve walked that precipice of feel­ing like I’m a wide open win­dow and every­one knows– and des­per­ately want­ing some­one to ask, so I can say “No, I’m not okay,” just so I have some­one to talk to, but need­ing the excuse of some­one to ask– and feel­ing like I don’t want any­one to acknowl­edge what we’re all com­pletely aware of, that I’m more than a bit of a wreck, clingy and prone to TMI blurts, because if someone’s kind to me at just the wrong moment, I’ll lose the ten­u­ous grip on myself that I’ve man­aged to find and that– that’ll be it, maybe not just for that moment but for– well, for­ever, because some days are more des­per­ate than others.

Some days, I say– “No, but thank you for ask­ing.”  Some days, I bla­tantly lie.  I don’t expect that it’s any­thing except known for gospel truth that I’m telling a false­hood when I say I’ve got a bad headache or I’m just not feel­ing well because of my arthri­tis– I almost always have some phys­i­cal hurt going on, but there are some pains you get used to.  Still, they are kind enough not to press.  Some of my closer friends (boy, are they saints) even let me get away with ignor­ing the ques­tion and pre­tend­ing like I didn’t hear them/ chang­ing the subject/ work­ing on in sullen silence.  I try to return the favor when they’re hav­ing bad days, though there are days/weeks/months when they/I/we will say– “Ok.  But if you change your mind…”

One day, though, when the blame, blame, blame and just the sheer vol­ume of daily mun­dan­i­ties to be got­ten through was too much, some­one asked me if I was okay at work and for once, I said no, I was pretty depressed, but I was work­ing on it, and thank you for ask­ing.  I intended to leave it there because– well.  Bur­den­ing peo­ple with TMI, ver­sus telling the truth?  It’s a hard bal­ance.  Still, we ended up talk­ing a bit when this per­son pressed the issue, shared an expe­ri­ence of their own.  It made me feel a lot bet­ter and also made me see the per­son who asked in a dif­fer­ent light– not that I hadn’t liked them already, but– nev­er­the­less.  And the world hasn’t imploded– yet– for admit­ting aloud that I’m human.

Maybe I’ve rea­son to believe/ We all will be received.