You Are Not Alone: Celebrating Community for Mental Health Awareness Week

Since 2001 the Mental Health Foundation has been leading Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) to focus on good mental health. Each May, people from every part of society take part. This year, MHAW will take place from 12 to 18 May 2025. The theme for 2025 is “Community.”

Being part of a safe, positive community is vital for our mental health and wellbeing. We thrive when we have strong connections with other people and supportive communities that remind us, we are not alone. Communities can provide a sense of belonging, safety, support in hard times, and give us a sense purpose.

That’s all well and good, but what if you don’t feel part of a community? What if you never have? What if you don’t want to? This came out in conversation with my friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson. Aimee blogs at I’m NOT Disordered and writes for Shake My Hand, the campaign she founded to empower survivors and reform professional responses to rape and abuse.

A: Did you see the MHAW theme this year? I tagged you. Did it give you any ideas?

M: Ah yes. Thank you. I saved it, but haven’t thought about it yet. How about you?

A: For Shake My Hand I’m going to do a piece on building a community amongst people with similar experiences.

M: That’s a great idea. I’ve rarely if ever felt that kind of sense of community. That could be something to explore in itself, I guess. I’ve written about it in the past, but I could probably find a new angle.

A: Is that a sad thing? It feels sad.

M: I’m not sure. Maybe, yeah. A bit.

It’s true that I’ve never truly felt part of any larger community or tribe. I’ve explored this previously in a number of blog posts, including Belonging (Longing to Be), Finding My Tribe, Tribe and Untribe (A Trip to the Pub), and Being a Man: Exploring My Gender Identity for International Men’s Day.

At different times in my life I’ve found myself at the edge of groups or communities in which I’d have loved to fully belong. The BE-in folk at university. The various friendship and social groupings when I lived and worked in London. The informal community of writers and poets who frequented the Literary Salon in Newcastle. The wider team of Mental Health First Aiders at work. In each case, I was qualified to be a member by virtue of connection with other members, interests, skills, or training. I almost never felt I was a fully signed up, card-carrying member, however. That’s no fault of the other members. My lack of belonging is on me, not them.

I’ve never been able to do the social thing. I’ve never known the criteria for membership or had access to the rules of engagement. On more than one occasion I’ve watched in awe as people do the social thing. I can’t do that. I sit quietly in the corner at parties, happy to have been invited but utterly unable to engage. I fare much better one-on-one, or in very small groups.

Aimee asked me if it was a sad thing. Sometimes, yes. I recall once, many years ago, sitting in a coffee shop on a Saturday morning. I felt utterly unconnected and alone. The network of friends I’d relied on to be there seemed to have fractured or disappeared. That was at least partly my fault. I hadn’t been good at keeping in touch. It took the death of a friend for me to recognise how much had changed, and how much needed to change if I wasn’t to remain unconnected.

I had no idea how to approach that. How to build new connections, meet people, make friends. It wasn’t easy. It required me to examine everything I thought I knew about other people, friendships, and connections. For too long I’d maintained an inner circle of close friends — and nothing and no one else. Unpacking that took a long time and considerable effort. I shared something of that journey in one of my early blog posts, Dissolving the Circle. I find it useful to reread now and again. It helps keep me on track.

Over the years, I’ve learned people differ in the kind of communities and networks that work for them. I discussed some of these differences in Spokesfriends and Insular Groups: What Kind of Support Network Do You Have? Big groups of mutual friends don’t work for me. I feel much more supported by a network of one-to-one friendships. My friends know one another but my connection with each is distinct and free to develop independently. Aimee captured this perfectly in the conversation that inspired this post.

A: I’m a community for you! We make our own little one.

M: Bless you! Yes we do!

A: A two-blogger-community! It totally works! I’d far rather have one amazing friend than a town of random people.

M: I couldn’t agree with you more!

As I sit writing this in a coffee shop on a Saturday morning, it’s hard to express how different my situation is compared to that other Saturday morning years ago. I feel connected, supported, cared for, and loved. Four years ago, I captured something of this in Team Marty (Because No One Can Be Everything for Everyone). As I wrote there, “These are my people. My tribe. Team Marty. I couldn’t be who I am, do what I do, without them.”

It’s not an exclusive club. Membership varies from time to time. Existing friendships evolve and change. I make new friends these days without worrying if we’re perfectly compatible or will be in each other’s lives forever. One friend is able to forgive the fact I care nothing about sport and have never been to a soccer match. I can accept (just) that some of them don’t like cheese.

Someone I’d only recently got to know checked in with me after reading something I’d put on social media. Her “Just seen your Facebook post, hope you’re okay” meant the world to me. This is my kind of community. Occasionally there are disconnects. Friendships take a pause or end. Sometimes they begin again. Situations and needs change. Caring endures. As a dear friend reminded me after a lengthy period of disconnect that neither of us fully understands, “There’s no reason for us not to be able to support each other as friends.”

Over to You

What does the word community mean to you? What communities do you identify with? In what ways do you feel supported, cared for, and validated? What kind of support network works for you? We’d love to hear your thoughts, either in the comments below or via our contact page.

 

Photo by Rathish Gandhi at Unsplash.

 

One Old Man on a Bench

I’ve always had a thing for benches, so much so that they feature in three of my four all-time happy places. Benches to rest on. Benches to think, write, and dream. Benches to sit and talk with friends. Benches with a view. Benches with memories. This evocative photo by Huy Phan inspired me to explore the role benches have played, and continue to play, in my life.

To Sit With Friends

There are two wooden benches in the middle of the village of Great Musgrave in Cumbria. I’ve shared many calls there with Fran on my evening walks from the holiday cottage I used to visit almost every year. A little further on, down a narrow avenue of horsechestnut trees, another of my favourite benches sits in a field outside St Theobald’s Church beside the River Eden. Another happy place bench is in the beer garden of The Wateredge Inn, in Ambleside.

From my table, less than twenty feet from the waves lapping against the pebbles of the shore, I have a perfect view south along the lake. It’s early evening and the last few ferries of the day ply their trade from the Ambleside jetty to Bowness and beyond. It’s simply, breathtakingly, beautiful. On the table is a pint of beer, my beloved brown passport-size Traveler’s Notebook, fountain pen, phone stand, and journal. On my head, my Bluetooth headset, anticipating a call. Fran and a few other close friends have shared moments with me there.

Dismantled in 2022 to make way for an unspectacularly banal office complex, former music and social venue STACK Newcastle holds a special place in my heart.

I have great memories of sitting by the roaring open fire in the Tipi Bar or at the benches in the main area, catching up with my journal, capturing ideas for future blog posts, or waiting for friends. As well as local friends, I’ve shared time at Stack with Fran and others through photos, chat, and video calls.

Other benches come to mind. Beside the River Wansbeck in Morpeth, where Aimee I had a picnic a few years ago before cracking each other up (“Know what I mean?” “I thought I did!”) and climbing Ha’ Hill to look down over the town. The blue painted bench at Beaulieu in Hampshire where I sat with Fran on the first, and so far only, occasion we’ve met in person. The ocean view bench she shared with me many times when she lived on Peaks Island in Maine. More recently, we had a video call together on a bench in the grounds of Fran’s former school in New Jersey. We shared the events of the day, stories from her past, and the local wildlife. “Marty, look! A bunny, a robin — and a deer!”

My favourite bench of all, though, sits at the intersection of Fawdon Walk and Brunton Lane, less than ten minutes’ walk from my home. It’s not the most comfortable or delightful to look at. It doesn’t have the best view. It’s nevertheless witnessed a great deal of my life and a few of its most significant moments over the past few years. I’ve spent hours on that bench talking with Fran and other friends, sharing the highs and lows of our lives no matter what was going on at the time. This was never more valuable than during covid lockdown when local walks were my sole escape from the disruption and uncertainty playing out in the world. I remember the chat and voice messages I exchanged with one friend a few years ago, discussing our respective blogs and podcasts. (Hi Liz!) Most of all, I treasure the selfies taken with my friend Louise when she came to visit. Lou, I adored your excitement at finally seeing the bench of which you’d heard so much! Hopefully, it won’t be too long until we’re sitting there together again.

Solitude and Contemplation

There’s more to benches than sharing time and conversation, however. They can be a place to be quiet, with and within yourself. I almost always have my diary with me on my walks, and keep my eyes open for somewhere to sit and catch up with the events of my day. During lockdown, I’d go out two or three times a day if the weather permitted. I start every diary entry with the date, time, and where I’m writing. There are literally hundreds of entries through 2020 and 2021 that begin with the words “Fawdon Walk bench.”

Another great location to sit and think is the white metal bench beside the lake at Kirkharle in Northumberland. Originally designed by English landscape gardener Lancelot “Capability” Brown, who was born at Kirkharle in 1716, the lake was created in 2010 after his plans were discovered. Continuing the benches-beside-water theme, I wrote a piece for Mental Health Awareness Week 2018 sitting on a bench at Tynemouth.

Today — Saturday, May 19, 2018 — is the day of the Royal Wedding. I wish Harry and Meghan well in their life together but I brought myself out to the coast to avoid the media, and social media, onslaught. It’s just not something I feel a part of. Here at Tynemouth there is calm and space and air and sky and sea. And a bench where I can sit and write.

That was a time of excitement, motivation, and change, with new opportunities and projects opening up for me. Sitting there with my Midori Traveler’s notebook on my lap, I explored how I was feeling. Of two fundraising events I’d attended that week, I wrote: “[they] were a lot of fun and raised much needed funds for local mental health projects. They meant a lot to me on a personal level too. I came away with a stronger sense of belonging than ever before: of belonging to a local community of people who accept me, who are genuine and open, and passionate about making a difference. Borrowing words from Fran, I feel I have found my tribe. And that’s a powerful thing.”

Loneliness and Exclusion

Keywords for the image I chose to illustrate this post include senior, depression, mental health awareness, mental health, person, man, bench, adult, and alone. At first glance, I saw an old man sitting on a bench in the city, head down, excluded from — or at least on the outside of — everything going on around him. I marked my sixy-third birthday a few months ago. I wonder what people see when they pass me sitting on the bench at Fawdon Walk. I’m almost always alone. Head down, more often than not, on my phone or writing my diary. There’s a poem by M. W. Ketchel which addresses this directly.

Old Man On A Park Bench

The old man stops and exhales life,
sitting down on a park bench, if but for a moment to rest.
He ponders the decades, his many years of strife,
and his heart grows weary in his chest.

The elder reflects on his better years,
and happier times that have passed him by.
What remains now is loneliness, some tears,
and memories of a time when he might ask, why?

Age and wisdom, he looks across the park to watch the children play
and he smiles a private, sad, but tender smile.
Was it so long ago or only yesterday
He closes his eyes in the sun, and decides to stay awhile.

A far more sinister interpretation of the “old man on a bench” trope can be found in the decrepid character of Aqualung in Jethro Tull’s song of the same name.

Sitting on a park bench.
Eying little girls with bad intent.
Snot running down his nose.
Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.

According to the band’s lead singer Ian Anderson in a 1999 interview for Guitar World, “The idea came about from a photograph my wife at the time took of a tramp in London. I had feelings of guilt about the homeless, as well as fear and insecurity with people like that who seem a little scary.” He continued, “I suppose all of that was combined with a slightly romaticized picture of the person who is homeless but yet a free spirit, who either won’t or can’t join in society’s prescribed formats.”

There’s a milder, albeit still disturbing, echo of Aqualung in my unpublished short story “And Men Myrtles.” The principal character Bill Stokes is fifty-three years old, “perhaps a dozen fewer than he appeared to casual observance.” The tale opens in Oxford’s Wolvercote Cemetery where Bill is tending his wife’s grave. His world and life are overturned by events he’s incapable of understanding.

There was a bench along the path and he made his way towards it with shuffling steps. It was close — too close — to this strange party but he needed to sit down. And there was something else, something that might be curiosity but felt to William rather more like need. The arrival of these people into his world, the tall man and the girl with the raven hair, was a more than incidental event. He did not know what it meant but, good or bad, he needed to find out.

He’s more than aware how he must appear to others.

He felt himself being swept up into the darkness but he was afraid to open his eyes in case the crowd had noticed him sat there. In case she had noticed him sat there: an old man on a cemetery bench. Decrepit. Pathetic.

In many ways, it’s a tale of redemption, transformation, even hope. There’s a price to be paid, however, and it’s not paid by Bill alone.

Loneliness and exclusion remind me of Ronan Keating’s brilliant song When You Say Nothing At All from the soundtrack to the film Notting Hill. The video opens with Keating sat at one end of a park bench. As he sings about knowing what his lover means “without [her] saying a word” a woman joins him on the bench. The secret thoughts of visitors to the park are displayed as they go about their lives. The woman on the bench reveals a certain enigmatic claim to truth — “People think they know him, but they don’t.” — but there’s a hint of more. Disappointment, perhaps, or something darker. “What you see is never what you get.” The video spotlights the disconnect between what we naively tell ourselves — that there’s no need for honest and difficult conversations because if we love someone we intuitively understand what’s going on — and the reality of people unable to express their genuine thoughts and feelings.

A Place to Rest

I don’t want to overplay the old man card, but at sixty-three I’m increasingly grateful for benches as somewhere to sit and rest. I recognise this can be frustrating for anyone out with me who may be younger, fitter, or simply less in need of a sit down every twenty minutes. I’m happy, nonetheless, to take the weight off my feet when someone went to the trouble of providing somewhere to do so. Perhaps that’s what the man in Huy Phan’s photo is doing. Maybe he’s waiting for a friend to join him, minding the bags while his partner looks round the shops, pausing to consider what next to do with his day, or simply letting the world go by without him for a while. In the words of Jon Kabat-Zinn, “It is indeed a radical act of love just to sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself.”

Less literally, being on the bench means sitting things out, watching from the sidelines as the action plays out in front of you. A number of years ago I was unable to support a friend who was going through a really rough time. I felt on the outside of things, although I respected the fact I wasn’t who they needed at that time. Louise reminded me that I was still on my friend’s team, I just wasn’t on the pitch at that moment. I was on the bench, waiting until I was called back onto the field. The analogy helped me greatly at the time, and has done so on many occasions since.

Over to You

Do you have a favourite bench? Do you enjoy sitting there with a friend, or taking a few moments for yourself? What would your ideal location be for a bench? Overlooking the ocean, perhaps, or some other scenic vantage point. Fran and I would love to hear from you, either in the comments below or via our contact page.

 

Photo by Huy Phan at Unsplash.

 

It's Not Enough: Exploring Loneliness for Mental Health Awareness Week

Loneliness is the feeling we experience when there is a mismatch between the social connections we have and those that we need or want.

— Mark Rowland, CEO, Mental Health Foundation

I’m grateful to my friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson of I’m NOT Disordered for inspiring this post.

The theme for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is loneliness. I can’t always draw on my lived experience when discussing mental health, but loneliness is something I know first-hand. I think that’s true of everyone. We’ve all been lonely at some time in our lives, and yet each of us experiences it in our own way.

Perspectives of Loneliness

Keen to elicit some different perspectives, I posted a request on social media for contributions on the theme of “what does loneliness mean to me?” I received some brilliant and heart-moving responses.

“Loneliness is feeling like no one in the world could possibly understand you or what you’ve been through.” (Aimee)

“Loneliness doesn’t have to mean alone. You can feel lonely in a room full of people.” (Vikki)

“Loneliness is like a mental and emotional prison sentence where you are restrained and gagged. Each day they get tighter, never knowing when you will be freed or rescued.” (Emma)

“Being awake feeding the baby, walking up and down for hours feeling it’s just you alone in the night.” (Melanie)

“It means an absence of true support, and feeling unconnected to people who you are surrounded by.” (Brynn)

“A feeling of emptiness and nobody is there.” (Christine)

“That it’s possible to feel so alone despite being in a roomful of people. Feeling disconnected to everyone around you.” (Louise)

“Alone is different than lonely. Alone, I’m an intrepid adventurer, camera in hand, prowling through sun dappled woods, seeking a hidden waterfall; excitedly content when I find it. Lonely, I’m sitting, knitting, staring blankly ahead, trying to empty my mind … my hands not actually moving at all.” (Bernadette)

“What if you don’t ever get lonely? I prefer to be alone, it frustrates me when people think it would ‘do me good’ to get out and socialise more. The opposite is true.” (Cal)

“Loneliness to me means isolation, inability to connect and pain.” (Veronica)

“I have not experienced much loneliness in my life. I enjoy quality alone time. But it is good to see old friends every now and then.” (K. J.)

“I’m pretty much homebound now. Luckily, I like my own company and have a dog. There are times though that I just cry, I don’t know why, I just do. Until my second stroke and a TBI [traumatic brain injury] I’d spend days in the woods, by myself, the emotional and spiritual pain of that makes me cry too.” (Erik)

“You can feel loneliness when you are around friends and family and you are ignored even though you are starving to be part of the group. I feel that a lot, unfortunately.” (Patricia)

I’m grateful to all who shared their thoughts and feelings on this most personal of topics. I relate to some of these comments strongly, especially the last one with its sense of feeling excluded when all you want is to belong. That’s a loneliness I know well and have written about before.

Loneliness as Unmet Needs

I have a family. I have friends and colleagues, including a number of very close friends who comprise my support network. I nevertheless feel profoundly alone at times. This can be hard to accept or admit, even to myself. How can I be lonely when there are so many people in my life? I found an important insight in the words of Mental Health Foundation CEO Mark Rowland (emphasis is the author’s).

Loneliness is not about the number of friends we have, the time we spend on our own or something that happens when we reach a certain age. Loneliness is the feeling we experience when there is a mismatch between the social connections we have and those that we need or want. That means it can be different for all of us.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Our connections can be many, strong, real, and meaningful. Yet if they’re not meeting our needs, individually or collectively, we can still feel very much alone. One particularly perceptive friend told me a while ago: “a lot of your sense of self and wellbeing relies on contact with others. This can be both a good and a bad thing depending on when and what and how balanced it is.” Another friend said of someone she knows, “I care about her but there again, I feel lonely in that friendship because I can’t just be myself.”

What Loneliness Means to Me

My earliest memory of loneliness goes back to my first year at university. I would stand night after night at the window of my halls of residence looking out across the lights of the city, extravagantly empty and alone. I ached for something I had yet to experience. Genuine connection. There's a Genesis track I remember from those days. It contains the lines, “It’s not enough, it’s not enough. This feeling I’m feeling inside. Oh, I know it, I know tonight that I’ll be on my own again.” Forty years on, that track (Alone Tonight) can bring me to tears. Ironically, back then, I would not have cried. I had yet to learn how.

One Friday in September 1982, I arrived in Norwich to begin a six-month work placement at the regional hospital. I unpacked in my tiny room in the nurses’ home, and phoned friends to let them know I’d arrived safely. I enjoyed the months I worked there, but on that first night as I put down the phone, with the weekend ahead of me in a new city with no one I knew, I felt an almost existential loneliness.

A year later, I left university to begin a research post in London. I felt empty, hurt, and very alone. Much of the pain was of my making, the product of emotional immaturity and a self-centredness I cringe to recall. Years later, a close friend died, and I realised that due largely to my complacency I’d lost touch with the people I’d previously relied on to be there for me. As I’ve described elsewhere, “I had my immediate family — and pretty much no one else. I had never felt more alone.” It proved a turning point, however, and led to some significant changes in my attitudes and expectations which served me well.

Not that everything was plain sailing from then on. A dozen years ago or so, a friendship ended chaotically, triggering an intensity of loss and emptiness I’d never experienced before. In that moment I learned how to cry. It feels wrong to say, “so at least something good came of it,” because the other person was hurt in the process. It was, nevertheless, another seminal moment.

Move forward a few more years. Another friendship and another break-up. This time, it involved far more than the loss of someone dear to me. Much of what I thought I’d learned about myself, and most of what seemed positive about my life, was thrown into question. I’ll never pretend it was easy because it wasn’t, but I worked hard to understand what had happened and my role in that. My friend and I eventually reconnected. That was a new and valuable experience in itself. Until then, broken connections and lost friendships had rarely been taken up again.

Addressing the Imbalance

It’s clear from what I’ve just written that connection is very important to me. It’s one of my key life values, the others being challenge and creativity. Not everyone is like me in that regard, but whether we value many connections or just a few, if our emotional needs are not being met it’s worth looking at both sides of the equation: our connections and our expectations.

What does this kind of exploration look like? It will be different for everyone, but I’ll share some of my recent thinking. A few weeks ago, I decided to read a couple of my old diaries; something I rarely do. More or less at random, I picked 1982 and 1983. Revisiting my former self in this way was an intense experience. Then as now, people were very important to me. My diary entries are filled with my interactions with friends, colleagues, and fellow students. My mood and sense of self were governed by my connections with all these people. It was something of a shock to realise that in some ways, not much has changed. I’m better at handling the ups and downs, but I still place a high value on my connections. I still get excited if someone new enters my life. It still hurts if a friend or friendship is struggling.

The main insight I gained, however, was that it’s unnecessary and unrealistic to expect one set of people to meet our needs for all time. Hardly anyone from the early eighties is active in my life today, and none of the most important people in my life now were around back then. Some of my closest friends weren’t even born in 1983! People come and go. That might sound sad — or obvious — but there's an upside. I might be lonely right now but there’s every reason to believe there are more amazing people out there, just waiting to enter my life. As writer Iain Thomas puts it, “Someone you haven’t even met yet is wondering what it’d be like to know someone like you.” This hope can be difficult to hold on to. If you’ve lived in the same town or worked the same job for years without finding the connections you crave, or have lost the ones you had, it can be hard to believe new people are out there. And if they are, how do you find them? It’s easy to say “join a club – or go to the gym” but if these aren’t your thing (they’re not mine!) what do you do?

Instead of focusing on the connections you don’t have, think about those you’ve achieved in the past. If you did it before you can do it again. How did you meet? What drew you together? I met most of my current close friends online, including Fran who I connected with on a mutual friend’s social media page in 2011. I met my two local best friends volunteering for the mental health charity Time to Change, and made other connections through local groups and events. Time to Change closed in March 2021, but I could volunteer elsewhere. Some of the groups I attended are no longer active or open to me, but there will be others to explore — not explicitly to meet new people, but it would open that up as a possibility.

When we’re lonely, it’s easy to think we’re doing something wrong. We imagine we’re putting people off, not trying hard enough, or sabotaging our relationships. It doesn’t help to blame ourselves, but it’s healthy to explore how we connect and interact with others, to see if there’s anything we might wish to change. Look for patterns. Do you tend to connect with people who are not a good fit for you? Do you behave in certain ways that seem to push people away? These are all things we can explore and change.

I’ve always tended to be “too much” for my own good. Too attentive. Too generous with my time, energy, and affection. My timeline is scattered with people I’ve overwhelmed, upset, or pushed away by being unnecessarily intense and overbearing. I’ve come a long way in addressing these tendencies, but it’s something I still need to guard against. I’m grateful for the people in my life who accept this about me whilst also challenging it when necessary. Codependency is a related toxic trait which Fran and I are particularly vigilant about in our friendship.

Reconciling the connections we have with what we want and need doesn’t mean giving up on our expectations or “making do” with unsatisfactory situations. It does mean exploring our needs and adjusting them where they’re unrealistic, unhelpful, or unhealthy. It isn’t easy but it does work. One of the most valuable things you can learn is who you are, separate from your connections. There are behaviours and expectations I used to have, that I’ve let go of or adapted. There are some I still need to address. But there’s some needs I’m content with. Whether they’re met or unmet at any particular moment, they’re a fundamental part of who I am. Lonely or not, I am enough.

Further Reading and Resources

Founded twenty-one years ago by the Mental Health Foundation, Mental Health Awareness Week is an annual event focused on achieving good mental health. Check out the Mental Health Foundation website for further information, ideas, and resources, including a loneliness pack for schools and a student guide to loneliness.

For help with the loneliness of bereavement visit Cruse Bereavement Support or the bereavement resources page provided by UK mental health charity Mind.

Whatever its source, chronic or extreme loneliness can become profoundly unhealthy and debilitating. This article by Mind offers practical tips to help manage feelings of loneliness, and other places you can go for support. The Mental Health Foundation also shares tips and advice on coping with feelings of loneliness and isolation.

You will find links to support organisations and crisis lines on our resources page, and in this roundup of resources for men’s mental health.

Over to You

I’ve explored what loneliness means to me and shared insights from others on this important topic. How do you feel about what you’ve read here? What does loneliness mean to you? Do you get lonely? How do you handle loneliness and what impact has it had on your life? Please feel free to leave a comment below, or contact us.

 

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash.

 

I Wasn't Disappointed in You When

I wasn’t disappointed in you when your weight went up because you ate all the girl scout cookies. Although maybe it seemed that way when I suggested you throw them away or gift them to someone next time, and lectured you about average daily calories. As though that would fix your relationship with your body.

I wasn’t disappointed in you when you told me you cut yourself. Although maybe it seemed that way when I said remember I’m here. Don’t ever feel you’d be a burden or that I’d be too busy or asleep. As though I can make the demons go away.

I wasn’t disappointed in you when you went back to sleep after our prearranged wake-up call. Although maybe it seemed that way when I started calling a second time or a third to make sure you were up. As though your day starts better in my hands.

I wasn’t disappointed in you when you told me there’s no hope, no job, no friends for you so why bother trying. Although maybe it seemed that way when I pushed suggestions in your face you’d tried a hundred times before. As though my blazing positivity could make a difference this time.

I wasn’t disappointed in you. But maybe you were. And I didn’t honour that. I didn’t allow breathing space for that.

I need to sit with this a while.
Breathe it in. And out again.
Because I’m disappointed in me.