What a Shame

by Abigail Bergstrom

There’s only so long those who love you can dampen their own happiness out of sensitivity for your misfortunes.

Our rope was tough and hard-wearing, and unlike the many plant metaphors of other relationships, ours didn’t demand a single drop of water. I didn’t have any other friendships like it.

‘Because when someone makes you feel like you’re not good enough for them you become completely consumed by the task of disproving their theory. I want to see the look on his face when the epiphany hits and he realises I am in fact the most incredible and inimitable woman he’s ever met.’

He makes me feel validated and completely empty all at once.

Those karmic partners who ebb and flow from our lives are sent to teach us a very difficult and painful lesson about ourselves. Not a soul-mate but a plan for the demise of our ego, here to show us what’s holding us back.

The severance when a close friend falls in love induces a rhythmic leak in the gut, a constant reminder they aren’t wholly available to you any more. She can’t hang out because she’s being introduced to their friends at the pub that evening or she’s going to stay at their parents’ place for the first time that weekend, and just like that there’s an entire new continent in her world that you’ll never get to roam with her, as you had everywhere else, tracing by foot the intricacies of her cities, her places of worship, her internal roads.

Although I was a terrible account woman, I quickly found my feet on the creative side of the floor. I built up a portfolio throughout my twenties, then stepped off the ladder and into the world of freelance. Now I do branding, copywriting, directing, and whatever else comes my way. I’m good at it – not that you ever asked me about my job.

I’m not sure I’ve made it. But I’ve managed to earn enough money to live the life I want. To have my freedom. To be able to have nice things instead of second-hand school jumpers or my cousin’s hand-me-downs. To be completely independent (well, financially at least), which is to carve out and hold space for oneself in this world. Which is to be noticed and taken seriously.

‘So, remember, we go around in a circle and each person has their turn.’ Ekua is standing, topping up our glasses. ‘When it’s your turn, you have the floor and the freedom to talk about whatever you want, without interruption. When someone is speaking you can’t talk or have any contact with them whatsoever. You just listen.’

‘Comforting someone when they cry can actually suppress their feelings. It prevents them from leaning into the emotion and what it is that they’re feeling. And, yes, it’s fine to giggle. This is an unusual situation, and so it’s a little uncomfortable.’

That which we do not bring into consciousness appears in our lives as fate. That’s what Jung wrote. Meaning that which I do not allow myself to process I then create out of all that’s around me.’

‘Once he moves in, I’ll probably never live with my friends again. And I’m mourning that. Grieving the end of it.

What frantically irked me was the permanence of this departure: are you gone for ever, or will you be coming back? To leave so suddenly and without cause somehow held the door ajar.

People who drank it spoke of long-term positive change in their lives, of healing and of purging something trapped inside them. Maybe I knew I had something I needed to remove, to force out. Something about this situation seemed inevitable for me. And so here I was, about to drink the most powerful hallucinogenic brew the world has to offer.

Sometimes it’s the things you say no to that define you.