100 days of Wonder – #25

I used my random day off to run at Bolton Abbey this morning and running is a great time to reflect. I never know where my brain will go but today it took me to something I overheard on the train a week or so ago (I have no idea what the actual conversation was about because it was a phone call and I only had one side of it). First the classic ‘Well everything happens for a reason’ which was quickly followed by ‘yeah but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right’ and then a little while into the conversation came my favourite ‘But all the things that have happened to you, they make you who you are, you wouldn’t be where you are now without all that’.

I have had a few comments on the picture for this post and others from the 2019 Disney trip. Apparently I look good and I look happy. I suspect the ‘good’ actually means ‘thinner than at almost any other point in your life’ but that’s a whole separate post. Anyway, when I look at the picture I definitely remember happy in that moment. I also remember the feeling of being marathon fit (I miss that). However, there is also real deep tiredness, there’s depression, there’s sky high anxiety, there’s doubt about work and next steps although it’s over 2 years before I eventually did make a move. So as I was running today, I was thinking about everything that led up to me in this photo and everything that has happened since and found myself furious at the sentiments I had overheard and actually have also been guilty of thinking if not actually saying. Everything happens for a reason? Fuck no. Even if we ignore current global horrors and just think about this in a really selfish ‘Jess’ little world’ way, I refuse to believe that the bad things that have happened to loved ones have a reason – in the sense that they lead to something more positive or meaningful in the future. They’re just bad things that happened to good people. As for what hasn’t killed me… well has it made me stronger. Doubt it. To be where I am in the photo and where I am now, happy in so many moments of my life, I must have been incredibly strong already. The career littered with toxic people and grade A narcissists didn’t make me stronger. I came through it because I was already strong. Those things made me more anxious, more cautious, more independent, more reluctant to ask for help and less trusting. They did not make me stronger. As for the ‘but they make you who you are and you wouldn’t be where you are now’… see previous sentence, we have a more anxious, cautious and suspicious me – that’s not a good thing. And yes, of course all of the things in my life make me who I am and without some of the experiences I wouldn’t be where I am now. To be clear, I like where I am now BUT it would have been lovely to, over the last say 12 years or so, not experience being off sick for months because I couldn’t actually get out of bed, not experience complete burnout and brain shutting down, not deal with almost daily micro aggressions and gaslighting. Think of all the joy and wonder that toxic workplaces can suck out of everything. So next time one of those meaningless platitudes pops into your head – whether you’re about to say it to someone else or to yourself, Stop. They’re just gaslighting. Being happy now doesn’t make past trauma ok. Being happy at some unspecified point in the future, doesn’t make something happening now worthwhile or ok. We can do better than that. As for the happy, good looking lass in the picture – I’m proud of her. She’s awesome.