Are yyou weak? Are you strong? A photo of superwoman mid-leap.

Why I Stopped Pretending to Be “Strong”

Today I’m thinking about weakness and strength.

“I envy you that you can afford to be weak,” a friend told me years ago. It made me think. Probably mostly because of the paradox. If being weak is something enviable, why do people attach a negative meaning to it?

I don’t consider myself weak. I used not to mind people attributing this quality to me because I don’t see myself that way. I’m not weak. I’m open about my feelings. And that’s not very common in today’s society, so much so that people can even find it unpleasant.

I think that calling people “strong” or”weak” is nonsense. I don’t think there’s such a thing as “weak” – it’s the same as trying to define the concept of “normal”. People are more complex than the artificial labels of “strength” and “weakness”.

The times I didn't die: A woman's face part visible through a curtain of leaves

The Times I Didn’t Die

I didn’t die. Maybe I should have.

The doctors said I had stopped growing when my mother was pregnant. They said I would be mentally retarded. My parents were proud, so proud, that I turned out to be gifted instead.

Their first child.

My mum was under great stress when she was expecting me. She and my dad lived with my great-great grandma, and she was bossy. When the mother has anxiety during pregnancy, there is a strong probability that the child will inherit that anxiety as well.

What I remember from regression therapy:
I don’t want to be here. Can I go back?
I want to shrink, to disappear.
I don’t want to have this body.
Oh God, do I have to do this? Let me out, let me out, please.
I don’t want to be here.

Welcome to the Un-Life

Welcome to the Un-Life

A year into protracted withdrawal abstinence syndrome from benzodiazepines.

It has caused anxiety.
It has caused depression.
It has caused great suffering.

But probably the worst is how it has stolen my feelings. All of my good feelings have all but disappeared.
It’s torture.
Day by day in the same greyness.
Day by day in the same emptiness, losing my will to live.
Day by day, every day is the same.

My white mousie, Daisy, "reading" a tiny book

Love Has the Shape of a Mouse

I found her outside on a walk. She was sitting in the grass on the roadside. Her fur was a perfect, startling white. She was happily nibbling on something she held in her tiny paws. I stared at her in awe and then suddenly realized she couldn’t possibly survive outside. I scooped her up before I could think it through, and just like that, I suddenly had a mouse. I didn’t know at the time that she would become my best friend. I didn’t know she would save my life as I saved hers. I didn’t know how much I would love her.