After the Flare

Blanket burritos, an existential crisis and love I didn't know how to receive.

Same story, with added nonsense

I've spent the last three days trying to work out why your comments from my last essay just completely flattened me.

I know it sounds dramatic. Yeah... sometimes I am a bit dramatic. But unfortunately, it's true.

Because on Sunday I was just flattened. Burrito blanket. Horizontal. My nervous system just slammed the door shut, turned off the light and said, "You deal with it."

Honestly, so rude.

I couldn't even bring myself to reply to the comments. Usually I'm there. I'm amongst it. But I was just seeing them come up, and I had to start DMing you guys instead because I couldn't leave the comments just sitting there. That felt rude. But I also didn't have the capacity to respond with the depth that you met me with.

So for the past few days I've been thinking... why? Why did that happen?

And my brain does what it always does when it can't make sense of something.

It thinks about death.

I know. I know.

I don't know why, but it just gives me perspective on life.

I don't know who I made a pact with to come to Earth this time, but I decided a very long time ago that this is my last go around on Earth. I'm not coming back anymore. It's too ghetto for me. Being human is hard.

And when that day finally comes and I get to meet my Creator, or God, or whoever the bro is that I need to go and meet to get my pass, I just imagine them going,

"You know what, Kelly Get in my office. We just need to do a little audit on your life. Frankly, we're tired. More importantly, we need to show you the life you could have had if you'd just chilled out a bit. Had you not tried to hold onto the steering wheel so fucking tightly”

And maybe that's how this whole thing started.

Because when I published last week's essay, I wasn't telling one of my normal stories. I was in it. I was right in the thick of it. I was asking what you saw in me.

I hadn't done that before and I'm not someone who outsources my thinking. I never have. I don't know whether it's a survival strategy. If something's going on with me, I just disappear. I go deep into the rabbit hole and come back with whatever answer I can find.

That's just the way I've always been because I'm such a private person.

But asking people what they saw in me was like raw-dogging vulnerability at its fullest.

Then the comments started coming through.

And I don't know what I expected. Maybe a few sentences.

But no.

I got paragraphs. Really deep reflections. Care. Little exercises even. Just writing this makes me teary. And I can't stop thinking about it. I don't think I've ever felt so heard or seen by anyone since being on this planet. That's not me being dramatic. That's true. And also heartbreaking.

It's probably why I am the way I am with people.

Because when I ask you, "How are you?" and you say, "Good thanks. Yeah, I'm fine."

I'm not listening to your words. I listen with my eyes. I notice the little side glance. The jittery hands. The shuffle and upturned corner of your mouth. I notice your energy.

Im always paying attention to what's underneath the words, because that's where the truth sometimes is.

And then you guys just Uno reversed it onto me last week for the first time, I wasn't the one doing the reading.

I was the one being read.

And that was incredibly uncomfortable and exposing.

While I was horizontal in my burrito blanket, I thought maybe this had uncovered some kind of psychological wound. I love discovering new triggers about myself.

But I don't think that's what happened.

I think underneath it is a very vanilla, non-BDSM version of, "I'll figure it out."

Because I always have. I don't ask for advice. I don't talk about my problems. I've never had that thing where I could lean on someone without conditions or obligations attached.

So I learnt to grip onto everything as tightly as I could because there was no backup.

I was the backup.

And then the backup after that. It's s something I learned too early. So I figure it out, and I keep moving.

But when I look back on my life...

I’ve never had a plan and I don't know what I'm doing trying to make one now. Good grief. I've never exercised that muscle before.

Because I didn't plan on becoming a union organiser.

I didn't plan on becoming a brothel manager.

I didn't plan to become a mother.

Or have a stroke.

I didn't even plan to be on Substack.

And I certainly didn't plan on asking people on the internet what they saw in me, only to end up emotionally clotheslined because you answered with more care than I knew what to do with.

So what's this control thing about?

Maybe I already answered it by saying I had no one to fall back on.

Maybe that's where this whole performance audit thing came from. Being shown little moments I'd missed because I wanted to control things.

Because I couldn't just let things be.

Because I couldn't just be a feeler.

Maybe in that life audit I'd see myself walking past a street thinking, "I don't want to go down there."

When actually...there was probably something down there.

The conversation I didn't start.

The feeling I knew in my body before my brain did.

The nudge that I outthought.

Maybe guidance doesn't arrive with fireworks and some booming voice from the sky.

Maybe it's candlelight or asking “What do you need right now?”

Maybe certainty isn't the point. I don't know.

I want to be curious enough to say yes. To follow the nudge and move without attaching to the outcome.

Kelly. I'm talking to you. It's okay to finally stop trying to control every step. You're safe. It's ok.

Maybe it's time to say,

"You know what, Fuck the map”

I'm going to go and explore.

If you're wondering what on earth I'm talking about, this is the piece I'm referring to. But really, it's the comments. Those beautiful comments. ❤️