Heavy

“I don't want to be lifted out of this. I just don't want to sit in it completely alone.”

Tonight feels heavier than I can properly explain.

Nothing has happened, at least nothing obvious. Work still gets done. Conversations still happen. I answer the million questions which are directed at me one after the other from my youngest daughter. I laugh in the right places when something is supposed to be funny. From the outside everything probably looks completely ordinary.

But somewhere underneath all of that, it feels like someone has quietly turned the gravity up.

I've been trying to work out whether it's sadness, exhaustion or anxiety, but none of those words quite fit. It's more like I've drifted a few inches away from myself. Close enough to keep functioning, but just far enough that everything feels slightly delayed, as though I'm watching myself rather than properly living inside myself.

I don't know why tonight feels different.

Maybe that's part of what is bothering me.

There is usually something you can point at. A bad day. A difficult conversation. Something that happened. Something you can blame for feeling the way you do.

Tonight there isn't. It's just there. An uninvited presenece.

Therapy isn't helping in the way I thought it would. Not because it's wrong. If anything, it's probably the first thing that's been honest with me for a very long time. The difficult part is what happens afterwards, when I am left thinking about things I had spent years finding ways not to think about.

My childhood, in particular school, keeps appearing in conversations I thought were about work. Childhood keeps finding its way into decisions I made last week. Things I carried around for years as personal failings suddenly have different names, and I don't know whether that's comforting or unsettling.

Maybe both?

There is something strange about looking backwards and realising that some of the things you thought were simply wrong with you might have had reasons.

I don't know what to do with that yet.

Maybe I don't need to do anything with it tonight.

Silence isn't helping either.

It should. Normally it does. Normally I like having the room quiet. Tonight the quiet somehow feels louder than music. So I put some music on. Most of it feels wrong.

Everything seems to want something from me. Even music I normally love feels like it is asking me to become someone I'm not tonight, following the rhythem and the energy just doesnt feel right.

I don't want to be lifted out of this. I don't even think I want to understand it. I just don't want to sit in it completely alone.

That was when I started looking for something quieter. Something that didn't seem to care whether I felt better. Something that could just be there.

I think I've misunderstood what I need from music sometimes. I've always thought of it as something that changes a room. Something that can lift you, move you, take you somewhere else.

Tonight I didn't want anywhere else. I wanted something that would stay. There is comfort in hearing something that isn't trying to rescue you. Just something breathing in the same room.

I noticed after a while that the heaviness changed slightly when I stopped fighting it. It didn't disappear. I didn't suddenly feel good. I just wasn't arguing with it anymore.

That sounds insignificant, but it didn't feel insignificant at the time.

There was something tiring about constantly trying to work out why I felt like this and whether I should be doing something about it. Maybe I could just feel awful for a while without turning it into another problem that needed solving.

So I let it be there.

The music kept moving quietly in the background while I sat with it. I couldn't really tell you where one track finished and another started. They just seemed to belong together. There was no obvious destination. Nothing building towards some huge release.

That suited me. I didn't need a release. I needed somewhere to put the feeling.

Maybe that's what this session is becoming. Not an escape. Not really comfort either. Just somewhere I can arrive carrying more than I can explain. I don't need to turn everything into a lesson before I've finished living through it.

Some evenings are just heavy. Maybe that's all this is.

I don't know if I'll read this back one day and recognise the person who wrote it. Part of me hopes I won't.

Another part hopes I will, because if I do then maybe I'll remember that there were nights when I didn't understand myself very well and still managed to stay present anyway.

The music is still playing. The room is still quiet.

Nothing has been fixed.

I don't feel particularly different, but I don't think I need to.

I'm still here.

As I listen back, I can feel it. It might have been uninvited, but I didnt want it to leave. So i will come back again, and see if it shows up again.

Part of me hope it doesnt, but then part of me hopes it does.