Be Good to Yourself
When times are hard, try being soft
I have just returned to Berlin after four months at home in Ireland. According to the current German coronavirus regulations, on entering the country, I had to go directly to my flat for ten days mandatory isolation. This is my fourth spell of quarantine in as many months. I came armed and ready, my suitcase stuffed full of caramel bars and tea, my house already stocked with groceries by a loving friend. I returned humbly. Without expectation.
So imagine… Next to my bath was a box bath bombs. In the kitchen, a chocolate Lindt bunny. In the fridge, homemade bread. The next morning I woke up to some tulips deposited at my back door by my neighbour’s three-year-old daughter, later, a passing neighbour gave some peppers and yet another chocolate bunny to me. That afternoon, a friend passed by with some coffee and other goodies. In the evening, another friend dropped off a beautiful basket full of Italian dried goods compiled by friends to tide me over. I almost cried in the doorway.
“It must be hard coming back,” my friend said from behind her Berlin-regulated FFP2 mask. (She’s Australian, hasn’t seen her family in a year and a half.) “But I hope this makes you feel like you have a community here.”
It did. It does. I took the basket inside and laid out all the items carefully; a treasure chest, tokens of care.
But when I went to bed that night, just as I was drifting off, a thought shot up like a flare on a dark sea:
“You don’t deserve this.”
I lay stiller and quieter, rolling the thought around in my head. It was a sensation–a terror–of misplaced love. As though I’d received a letter intended for somebody else. As though I might be asked to “return to sender” these kindnesses, this community. “What if they discover,” I thought, “that I’m not worth this?”
I coached myself back. I brought perspective to bear on that particular “black dog,” muzzled it with evidence and reason.
The next day, a friend who had recently changed job said, “I’m scared I don’t have any value.” Another friend, the same day, said, “I feel like if I’m not doing something, I’m nothing.”
And I thought, Christ, it’s everywhere. A night sky full of flares: hissing, sparking, throwing crude, discoloured light on ourselves in the absence of the true, clear light of day.
So here I am, pyjama’d and quarantined, asking you to love yourselves a little stronger these days. Drop some tulips at your own back doors.
Allow yourself to feel sad
Happiness is great. We love happy. But happy isn’t everything nor should it be. The socially mandated happiness of “Good Vibes Only” culture can ignite the same kind of tooth-grinding frustration of everyone’s least favourite demented canine cheerleader, Scrappy Doo. Remember Scrappy Doo? Always so there and chipper. Somehow forced and incongruous with the narrative at large. Scrappy Don’t.
Sadness isn’t an inconvenience, it’s a natural function; the mechanism by which we breathe through emotional pain. When we sit with our sadness, we sit with ourselves as full and complex human beings. To banish it to the corner is to deny a fundamental part of ourselves–the human part–that lives a human, finite life where there will be joy, but there will also be suffering.
Tip: Get a blanket, lie on your floor, put some headphones on and listen to some sad bangers.
Acknowledge your uniqueness
There is no other you. There has never been another you. Even if there was another you, they will have existed in a different time and place thus negating the you-ness of them. You are a constellation of thoughts and feelings and experiences that has never happened before and will never happen again. Do you realise, then, how special you are? How precious? How deserving of wonder? I’m not religious but sometimes the Bible slaps. Matthew 10:30:
“But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.”
What the Big Man is saying is how dear you are. Think about the creature most dear to you in your life; how any ill coming to them might make you feel. Apply that same concern to yourself. You are worth it. And what’s really amazing, but sometimes very very hard, is that love, or at the very least care, is a gift you can give yourself.
Tip: For the next week, try writing down a compliment you’ve received or something you like about yourself every day. Keep the paper handy for the moments when the red flares are blinding.
Don’t compare yourself to others
Guess what your uniqueness means? That’s right: comparing yourself to others is utterly futile (at best). Allow me to do my favourite thing, which is use birds to illustrate a point:
When I was quarantining the first time, the first bird I saw in my parent’s garden in Ireland was a coal tit I very cleverly named “Coalie.” Coalie had a damaged wing that jut out from her little body resulting in her flying technique being not as graceful as… Let’s say it was creative. Coalie was often accompanied by another coal tit who did not have a damaged wing. Coalie’s companion was agile, and when he flew he generally ended up where he intended to on the first attempt. What was captivating about Coalie was that she just did her thing while her companion did his. Coalie ate, Coalie drank, Coalie fluffed her feathers, Coalie took a shit off a branch. Coalie spent her time simply being Coalie. Coalie was not concerned with the wings of her companion, but with doing the things she needed to do to keep being Coalie.
What Coalie can teach us is that to ruminate too much on the space between ourselves and others doesn’t serve us. We each have our own paths to fly and our own ways of flying them. Though we can draw inspiration from others, and certainly help others on their way, ultimately, we can only move forward on our own journey.
Tip: Obvious perhaps, but give yourself a social media break. You can even plan it ahead of time: “This weekend, I’m not going to check my Instagram.” Check in with yourself before, during and after your break on how it feels to disconnect from the endless scroll-a-thon of curated selves.
Nourish yourself
A big shortcoming of self-care is the engorged and crusty boner of commodified, capitalist wellness it’s aroused, so I’ll respectfully avoid any forms of caretaking that require purchases here. What can nourishing look like when we don’t want to (or can’t) throw unnecessary money at making ourselves feel better? Dictionary time:
Nourish: provide with the food or other substances necessary for growth, health, and good condition.
And what might that look like? Food, time, rest, water, quiet, movement, air, scent, sound, touch, breath, space, shelter… For some it will be spending a little longer in bed, for others it’ll be a brisk morning walk. Experiment until you find your nourishment.
Indulge: Find a moment of quiet and listen to your body. What does it need right now? Are you tired? Are you lonely? Well, then lie down, reach out. Be generous with the things you already have, maybe energy or time, and if that means letting the dishes go for an evening, fuck it. It’s only dishes. Remember that Boris Johnson exists and still manages to look himself in the mirror (despite his hair suggesting otherwise).
Soft isn’t weak, it’s flexible
Even in this pandemic, this stealer of lives and livelihoods, intimacy and normalcy, we are being told to run when it’s hard enough to stand. So, friends, readers, this is my invitation: Still yourself. Forgive yourself. Hold yourself gently as the precious thing you are. Sink yourself down from the choppy, flare-scorched surface into the calm, dark waters full of whale song and drifting plankton, where the body of an ocean lifts you up and keeps you together. You are so special in ways you might not ever fully know, but today, right now, you can begin to accept that in this one life, you’re the only you you have, so take care of it.
