Letting go. As in, making space for inviting in.
Ending. As in, making space to begin again.
This time last year I sat in these betwixmas days mulling over potential words. I wanted to choose a single word to take with me into 2024. A word of the year. Something to help me focus. To help me plot my course. I settled on space. Thinking about how tightly wound my schedule and my brain felt, I deeply craved slowness. Time and space for me to just exist. But also, for me to make sense of certain things I was coming to terms with.
Something I’ve spent a lot of 2024 making space for are my thoughts and feeling around money. Even as I write this sentence I want to scream in disbelief. What the fuck is going on? Me, expressing that I am a person who thinks about and has feelings in relation to money and material wealth? A year ago me COULD NEVER! In December 2023 I did a very important calculation. I added up all of my credit card debt. Aged 34, this was something I’d never done before. Something I’d been terrified to properly look at for at least a decade. The total, pretty much £27k dead on, was an eye watering sum that made me want to crawl into a hole for the rest of my fucking life. I certainly didn’t want to look the figure in the eye. And I absolutely couldn’t bring myself to think about what I might actually want to do about it.
At the time I did this staggering calculation, I was attending bi-weekly (I think this means twice a week?) therapy sessions as an outpatient of the Lewisham Personality Disorder Service. I was contorting myself to fit within the “rules” of this service which required me (and all patients) to be working a certain number of hours a week, to talk only about specific and narrowly defined topics and to not display any of the “problematic” symptoms of the illness we were supposedly being treated for. I faced queerphobia at every turn and found it impossible to advocate for myself within a service with a long history of pathologising queer folks, and which, at every opportunity displayed itself as deeply ignorant and completely lacking in knowledge or experience of queer lives. There was absolutely no way I could safely introduce the possibility that I may want to explore using gender neutral pronouns with either of my therapists, one of whom was so completely the opposite of intersectional (is there a word for that – un-intersectional doesn’t seem to cut it?) that I nicknamed him “dusty”, as in, from a previous less progressive era.
As for my job as a government lawyer, I simply could not deal with it anymore. I fantasised about any and all jobs which did not require their employees to think about the law. It didn’t matter what the actual jobs were in my increasingly desperate imaginings. What was important was the fact that my brain didn’t have to make sense of difficult concepts, didn’t have to try and put together an argument built out of principles developed by and for the powerful, to enable them to keep their power at all costs. Every attempt I’d made to seek support for my mental health at work had backfired, leaving me with the deeply uncomfortable feeling of having shared too much, for absolutely no purpose. I was completely and utterly spent. Layered on top of this deep exhaustion was the unbearable sadness I felt as, every day it became clearer to me, that the career I’d worked so hard to build was something I was going to have to let go of.
In 2024, I experienced some of the deepest and most profound depression of my life so far. The kind of darkness that leaves only hopelessness behind it. I’ve had no choice but to make space for this. I left my job as a lawyer. I stopped going to therapy (a decision that I 100 million percent know was the right one for me). Something I have learnt the hardest way is that therapy doesn’t help every mental illness. There have been countless times over the past year when I’ve sat on my couch, unable to see past the next hour or two of my day. I’ve screamed in emotional pain whilst my partner and my best friend have looked at me with fear in their eyes. We’ve watched countless movies as I’ve dissociated, trying to give myself some respite, some space, away from it all.
I also left my job at Boom Cycle in February 2024, after going through the shock of a 4th studio closure. Something that was communicated to the team with less than 24 hours’ notice, and which drastically affected my income as I was struggling to come to terms with the reality of my debt situation. There have been several moments over the past year where I have made decisions that have left me unsure as to whether I’d be able to pay my mortgage and my bills. I’ve always found a way and recognise the part privilege has had to play in this. I guess what I want to capture for my own record is the fact that, in 2024, I repeatedly made decisions in pursuit of space, both mental and physical, without knowing what the result would be. I was forced to trust that endings make way for beginnings. That, sometimes a path needs to be cleared, and space needs to be made, before it can become clear what will come next. Sitting in the unknown is, as difficult as it is for my anxious brain to accept, part of life.
When I’ve wanted things very badly, such as jobs I applied for in the aftermath of leaving the law, they haven’t worked out. As I look back on the past 12 months there are a couple of pretty huge “thank goodness I didn’t get that thing I thought I wanted very badly” moments. I’ve been forced to confront space in ways I didn’t appreciate in present time and now, looking back I feel such deep relief with how things have turned out. One particular job I got, but then immediately “un-got” because the studio in question closed, made space for one of the bravest things I’ve ever done. Ash Rides Ldn. What a relief the universe forcefully nudged me towards something so scary and made it impossible for me to do anything other than try. The space to try has proved one of the most incredible gifts of the past 12 months.
Gradually, I’ve read and listened my way towards developing a more compassionate and gentle mindset when it comes to my financial situation. I’ve paid off, pretty much exactly, £8k of the debt. My total now sits at just below £21k, because, at the same time as making payments, I used a little credit to pay for a certification I’m super excited about. I’ve done what I can to “un-shame” my own debt and, as such, the decisions past me made which have led to this version of my present. I’ve sold SO MUCH STUFF. And, at the same time, I’ve bought so much less than ever before. I’ve grappled, in a real way, with the question of consumption in my own life. I’ve laid the groundwork to enable me to make bigger, more impactful changes as a consumer as we make our way through another betwixmas and towards a brand new year. I’ve done internal and external work that I’m so proud of over the course of my spacious year, not one second of which has felt easy. I’ve survived every intense feeling I’ve felt. I’m filled with gratitude to be shortlisting the candidates for the word I’ll tether to 2025.
hny :)
