Of Perfect Pictures and little feet

March 16th 2020

‘Nous sommes en guerre. Toute l'action du Gouvernement et du Parlement doit être désormais tournée vers le combat contre l'épidémie.’

‘At war’ he said? ‘War!’

Those words were all the convincing she needed to decide to leave, to pack her suitcase, to quickly leave her beautiful city in the bloom of early spring, when Paris is at its best.  Afraid of what the measures would bring – loneliness, anxiety, everything compressed together in a small Parisian space, and God forbid time to overthink and over-analyze it all - She fled to another country, another town, another reality. 

A short while later, having settled into her new, albeit temporary, life, at her best friends’ very accommodating house with an even more accommodating garden; she soon caught herself posting more pictures on social media than ever before.  Toasting with champagne during fancy lockdown dinners with her friends, dinners for which they dressed up as if they were in a fancy restaurant, the next day sporting sunglasses à la mode during sunny aperitifs with spritz against a backdrop of floral galore, posing in front of the desolate but magnificent views of the city she had chosen as her covid-asylum, one of the most enchanting in the world according to her, she threw it all online. Her life, from every angle, was shared with whoever wanted to see it, and she was impatient to make every picture look like the perfect image of happiness.   

Coincidentally, a few weeks later coincided with her birthday, and despite the abundance of smiley, happy, cheery pictures on her apps, there was another side to her life, one she kept hidden, like the hidden side that the moon never shows even when its at its fullest.  As her birthday approached, she found herself thinking that if things didn’t change, really change in her life, she might not stick around for the next round of anniversary festivities.  Behind the sunglasses and the flutes of champagne, lay something else, something much less picture perfect; and because of this she couldn’t sleep, her energy levels went up and down like at a rodeo, she struggled to eat, had to force herself to ingest the bare minimum to survive, she levitated between lethargy and manic anxiety, and could go either way in the blink of an eye, all the while trying to show nothing but picture-perfect smiles.

Gradually, things in the ‘perfect’ and accommodating house started degrading, her friends, who she considered family, were suffering themselves under the weight of corona,  arguments and tensions became more and more frequent, and she stood on the sideline feeling powerless and maybe even partially responsible.

She had, not long before, met a handsome and interesting young man, who unfortunately for her, for his own reasons and whatever he may have been going through, did not turn out to be the nice-interesting young man she had expected, or needed (hoped) him to be.  She had started having occasional late-night escapades with him, in the hopes of eluding what she felt back at ‘the house’, it was meant to be a very welcome distraction from it all, but instead, it made everything worse.  The longed escape just ended up making her feel even more miserable and unworthy, and she allowed, even enabled, it to be so. 

She felt ashamed of her behavior, but was unable to confront it; she has no strength for confrontation with herself or anyone else, wasn't even sure who was right or wrong in  their behaviour?  Besides everyone seemed to have enough on their mind, without her adding to it, she was strong, she could handle it, go for a run, get over it .... All this made her feel powerless to everything that was happening to her, a meaningless pawn in a chess game without any strategy, on the front line, aimlessly, numbingly moving forward without a goal.  

She struggled with her work, the one thing she always thought she could fall back on, every friendship and relationship she had started feeling strained and hostile, the most trivial occurrence took on gargantuan proportions, yet still, with all the strength she could summon, she stayed on her feet and smiled her way through all of it, trying to make sure no one caught on to what was really happening inside her.

She didn’t know at the time that she had mononucleosis (yes the kissing sickness which makes you want to sleep all the time), whilst also enduring insomnia, creating this constant haze in her head, brought on by years of anxiety, years of putting on a ‘perfect’ smile for everyone else's sake, years of compressing it all where no one could see, and now all these years had simply caught up with her.

She believed that these self-indulgent, dark feelings could be chased away with self-discipline, emotional control, the pursuit of light-hearted and entertaining pastimes, hard work and most of all: gratitude for the many gifts life had bestowed on her; yet none of these tactics seemed to work, the cloud that was hovering over her never went away and only got darker, and she felt not only alone but terribly ashamed, as if she had no right to feel this way, she had after all such a ‘picture-perfect’ life…

That was me; me, one year ago.

A while back, a close friend told me that depression had followed her, her entire life, that there hadn’t been a day when she didn’t consider ending it. In response, I did what most of us do, I reminded her of everything she had, her kids, her husband, she was smart, beautiful… she looked at me a smiled and in her smile I could almost hear her saying: ‘None of that matters, but I know you can’t understand’.  She was right, I couldn’t, not then. 

I don’t know when it happened, because it didn’t just happen, it was slow, like an undetected cancer that only becomes fatal when it metastasizes and takes over your entire being; like one little drop at a time in a vase that can only hold so much.  One drop of pain, my pain that I was ashamed of, that I denied myself, and hid in an imaginary corner of my mind, hoping it would disappear.  One drop that took away just a little piece of me, of my self-esteem, thinking I could not be loved if I wasn’t ‘perfect’, if anyone actually saw me as I am...one drop of anxiety, one sleepless night…every time one drop, until the drops became uncountable, and my vase turned into a tsunami, which I always, ignorantly, thought I was immune to.

I understand now how that type of pain can be so debilitating that you can barely function; how it drains you of everything you have and there's no more 'good part' of you left when you're around others; how you become desperate for acceptance yet dreading ever showing the real you, I understand to which lengths you might go just to end that pain…

I would lay awake at night and stare at my feet, something I’ve done since I was a little girl.  I’d play ballerina in bed lying down casting shadows of my pointed feet on the wall; I have very small feet, as if they stopped growing prematurely, the feet of a little girl.  I stared at my little feet and the little shoes that came with them, and felt like a little girl, scared, confused, alone, in need of help but unable to ask for it, in need of adult feet to tell me everything was going to be ok.  I used to look at my feet and think how grateful I was to them, grateful that they had performed on various stages in medieval-like torture devices from ballet to tango shoes, never giving up, bent in all directions as a gymnast… and they had forgiven me.  They have taken me up mountains, and under water, over ruins, through tropical jungles and deserts, and desolate villages, and futuristic cities, they were unstoppable my little feet; yet now they made me feel like a little girl who was simply playing grown up.

One night, as I looked at my feet, I felt a sudden urge to ask for their forgiveness.  ‘I’m sorry for everything I put you through’, and the craziest thing happened, they answered:

‘Why are you asking for forgiveness?  We’re feet, walking is what we do, and we may be small, but you know that together we are warriors.  Now go to sleep and remember this, big or small, feet work best in pairs and, with the right shoes, we can take on any journey.  Tomorrow, find the right shoes and let’s start going to where you need to be.’’

The following day I called one of my best friends and told her about my feet’s advice, and about everything else, everything I had tried so hard to keep from everyone.  She listened to me cry for 2 hours, just listened, and then said: ‘Thank you for telling me, I had no idea, you made everything look so ‘perfect’.  I wish you had shared this sooner, to be honest with you, for the past two years, I’ve felt the same, I never told you this but …’ 

The same?  But we spoke all the time and she had never said anything, everything looked so ‘perfect’ in her life?!! My battery ran out twice while we spoke, everything came out, no filters, no forced smiles, just the truth, and at the end, the loneliness, the shame, of feeling this way didn’t feel so relevant anymore. That night, I slept 14 hours, I can still feel my body sinking into the soft mattress for what seemed like a year.   The next day I called my therapist and asked for her help to get me to where I needed to be.

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A friend of mine helped me write this text and before starting, he asked me a very simple question ‘Who are you writing this for?’ And I was not sure how to answer. I’m still not sure, all I know is that where I come from people don’t talk or show their weaknesses, as if you’ve somehow failed in life if you admit ever having any, bringing shame and isolation to an already very fragile state; not to mention the horrible defense mechanisms we can conjure up when we keep it all inside and the barriers we put up which are often worse than the pain we are trying to protect ourselves from.  

So, I guess I’m writing this to simply say ‘this is how I felt, and I think that’s ok’, just dialogue, not picture-perfect posts competing for ‘likes’, no shame, no 'fake' smiles, just honest openness that sometimes life is just hard and can get the better of you, of me… and maybe dialogue is a little step towards making it easier.