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Thursday 31st August 2023
“Quit being a whiny bitch.”
Usually I would protest tremendously if anyone were to call me a whiny bitch. But a few days ago, I was listening to a self development podcast and at that moment this was the very thing that I needed someone to tell me.
If you’ve read last week’s very jolly (not jolly at all) Substack post (Read here), you will know that times recently haven’t been the happiest for little old me. In truth, the last year has been one of THE most hardest years of my life. I don’t say that to be dramatic, I say that because it’s my legit reality.
In October of last year, I was gearing up to head off to LA and around the world indefinitely. At the time, I didn’t know when I was going to be back. I had quit my job, said my goodbyes, decluttered all of my things and made oh so many plans with loved ones on that side of the world. I was really freakin’ excited for this next chapter and all the things that I was going to be up to.
Then, in one major pivotal moment, I was denied entry at the border. I say that in such a succinct way but what actually transpired was around 5 hours of very intrusive, unnecessary and potentially racist interrogation by LAX immigration.
In the space of a day, I landed back on the tarmac at Heathrow Airport, sending messages to my loved ones on the flight letting them know what had happened. The messages were delivered once my phone got back into UK airspace and soon after that, the replies and phone calls began to happen. It must have been the juicy gossip of the week, month, year. I didn’t hear back from everyone who had found out and recent conversations with some people have alerted me to the fact that I was indeed spoken about but not reached out to.
Since then, my Nan nearly died at Christmas, my relationship with my parents deteriorated (we’re all good now), I moved to a new city for a job and then left the job in the space of a month, I’ve struggled to find a church, I’m yet to find my community in the new city that I’m now calling home and there have been deaths of loved ones. As you can see, the list has been pretty freaking gnarly.
I recently headed back to see my old youth group at a christian week away that they go to yearly. For those who don’t know, I am a pretty seasoned youth worker who has worked with young people since I was 16. It was so wholesome to see that group and to see the growth of all of them in the space of a year and to meet some new faces in both the team and the young people.
What I didn’t factor in when I had made the decision to go and surprise them was the fact that this would be the first time that I would be seeing most of them since saying goodbye to them to ride off into the Californian sunset. If anyone has worked with any group of young people then you will know that they don’t shy away from asking you the questions that everyone is thinking and they expect answers. I didn’t take into account that the day would be filled with conversations that would bring up why I was in a campsite in Staffordshire and not in LA and that they’d really like to know what had happened for me not to be there.
I know I get on my soapbox on my Substack very often, but in general my temperament is warmth and kindness and I like to have a laugh and make people feel at ease. What I’m now beginning to realise is that because of this temperament, I often come across like nothing phases me when it comes to personal struggles and overcoming blockades that get in the way of me doing what I want. The people who had not been in the trenches with me when the LA incident had happened and had just gone by the things they’d heard or that I’d posted on IG had not realised that the rawness of this topic was something that I was still dealing with and so jokes about it were pretty off limits. So when well meaning people joked about it, I laughed along but actually it was pretty gut wrenching and on the way home that night I ended up on the phone crying my eyes out at how overwhelmed I was feeling as the day ended. To their credit, I didn’t realise I was feeling that way until I was faced with that situation and so I don’t harbour any ill feelings towards it at all and in actual fact, the crying was never really about them anyway. It was down to the fact that there were unresolved issues that I hadn’t addressed within myself.
Fast forward a few weeks and I found myself on the couch multiple times, unable to move or do anything productive. Most of the days ended with me crying uncontrollably because I just felt so low and just worthless, helpless, overwhelmed, less than, you get the idea.
Since posting the Substack about depression last week, I realised that this was a wake up call for me that I was on the cusp of going through that cycle again and it was as a direct result of trying to keep my head above water and persuade everyone around me that there’s nothing to see here and that everything has been great! But things really haven’t been.
The friends who have gotten in touch with me this week have all said very similar things,
“You have been through a lot this last year.”
“You’ve had to make decisions this year and they were decisions that you were forced to make.”
“There’s a lot of grief here.”
“People haven’t treated you the way you should have been treated when you were going through things.”
“You’ve pushed down a lot of hurt and just got on with it.”
The overwhelming majority of my friends were not surprised that I had finally reached a point where it had become impossible for me to continue without addressing just how much disappointment, grief and pivoting I’ve had to do this year. I love them for the gentleness and grace they’ve given to me when I bullshitted them last week that I was OK and I love them even more for the love they had to correct me that the things I’ve been going through “...isn’t nothing. It’s pretty fucking serious” to quote one of my best friends.
There’s also another side of me too that realises that it shouldn’t actually be a surprise that there has been so much happening in this last year. I don’t know what I was expecting when I made the decision to go all in with the things that I feel like I have to do in this life. I know some people don’t think that there’s a purpose for why we’re here on Earth, but I am not one of those people. I believe that there’s a reason for why we’re here and I also believe that there’s a counteracting force that will do everything in its power to make sure that we don’t get to do the things that we feel that we’re meant to do. So yes, it really shouldn’t have been a surprise to me that I’ve been facing obstacles at every opportunity that they’ve had to present themselves.
So back to the podcast that I was listening to. After finally getting off the sofa and out of the house, I was on my evening walk and was listening to the CEO of multiple companies talking about how to be successful. I don’t often listen to podcasts along these lines because they’re often full of crap that’s easy to say from someone at the top who has “made it”. I don’t know how I started listening to this particular episode, but Spotify clearly knew what I needed.
The first thing he ends up saying is “Quit being a whiny bitch.”
At first, I laughed and then under my breath I called him a prick. But then he continued, “Did you think it was going to be easy going for those things that you want when you don’t have this mother f*cking ready made blueprint from someone else? Did you forget that it was going to be really hard? I’ve been to rough places and I still go to those rough places but you know what? You keep going, keep going, keep going.”
Hearing someone say this made me exhale. It made me cry because I knew he was right and the tough love approach was exactly what I needed in that moment of feeling like everything had turned to shit and all of my efforts had been for nothing. Which ain’t that the biggest mug o’ bullshit ever?!
Through everything that has happened this year, I’ve been pretty consistent in making it clear to those around me that I’m going to keep going. When I was on the plane coming back from LA after that really shitty experience, I posted a message in the Whatsapp group I have of people who are praying for this journey. One of the paragraphs from the very lengthy message to them, said:
“...So I guess I’m just going to have to do as much as I can from this side of the world to further enforce the global need for ethical film making standards. The vision hasn’t changed at all and it doesn’t change all the work I’ve put in over the last few years, it just currently changes the location that I’m doing that in for this next little bit…”
Typing that out for this post got me teary because I see the hope that is in that paragraph and I see all of the things that I continue to go on about over and over and over and over again. Somewhere in the last few months, that hope got extinguished and replaced with cynicism. Why? Because it got harder than I ever imagined it being and so I dipped out of moving forward and stopped believing in my convictions and stopped seeing other ways of doing things, rejecting a redirect as a form of progress. Before anyone says it to me, I know I’ve had very valid reasons to be that whiny bitch, but I think it’s time to put it to bed now and pull myself back out.
I think this is my “Stop being a whiny bitch” era, which probably means that it will be full of whiny bitch moments that will continue to erk me forward to do what I have to do. It’s going to be hard and I realise now that the kind of hard work I signed up for was making a difference and changing attitudes. So I’m in. Whatever it takes.
A few posts ago, I quoted Michaela Coel from the Emmy’s:
“Write the tale that scares you. That makes you feel uncertain. That isn’t comfortable. I dare you. In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to in turn feel the need to be constantly visible — for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success — don’t be afraid to disappear from it, from us, for a while and see what comes to you in the silence.” - Michaela Coel
As I approach nearly a year since it all went down in LA and since the spiral began, I think it’s probably high time that I disappear from view and get things done away from the prying eyes of social media. If I’m completely honest, posting on there has started to feel icky. It’s started to feel like it’s a minefield of peacocks vying for attention and I have felt myself become part of that. I don’t want people having access to me in that way anymore but I also don’t want to have access to other people in that way either. I’m thankful that the next few months are full of exciting moments and I’d just like to take stock of all of that and not feel the obligation to put it out there in the digital world to show others that I’m doing OK or seek validation from places that I don’t need to.
I think it’s been something that I’ve learnt about myself in this last year - I’m at my most overwhelmed when it feels like I have something to prove to others, I’m at my most content when I just get on with it without worrying about other people.
I have three post it notes with quotes on them that live on the wall above my laptop:
One says: Fuck around + Find Out
The one below that says: If it is to be, it’s up to me! Which is something that Miss Casserly, a teacher at my high school used to say repeatedly in assemblies.
The one below says: Some of us run on vibes which is something that was said in a writer’s check in that I was part of and I loved it so much that I wrote it down.
I love all three of these because they encompass me. I know a human can’t be defined by three measly post-it notes but I look at them and they help me focus. The top one reminds me that it's OK to try new things and see what happens, the second reminds me that I have to be proactive in order to bring about the change that I want to see and the third one reminds me that I run on vibes.
The vibe of this last year has not been too good. It’s been defeatist because of my circumstances and I’ve not been able to see beyond them. The vibe I currently have is one of finally acknowledging that it’s been a rough road and now trying to build something from the rocks that have littered what I had naively thought was going to be a smooth path.
I want my life to be noisy, but I want it full of the right kind of noise. I miss the days when I felt spiritually in step with God and was an infatuated Jesus lover wanting my actions both public and private to ooze love and kindness and be outward focused. My faith used to inform everything that I did and I think I’ve lost that in the last year because of circumstances. My faith made me feel magical, it made me feel powerful and like anything was possible. I think I let other people dictate my identity and I got too involved with the politics of The Church which clouded my judgement of the way the Creator made me. Those are the vibes I want to get back. I want to remember the magic in the hard times.
Yes I’m using God and magic in the same sentence, we’ve all watched Narnia, right?
I want to be a winning wizard instead of a whiny bitch.
Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts.
If you enjoyed reading, let me know! I love hearing from you!
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Winning wizard vibes!!! 💪🏼
https://open.substack.com/pub/stillness2justice/p/its-time-to-soar?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2fjpyk. Hello Nessa. You share your journey and your vulnerability so well through your written and spoken word. I thought I'd share words of encouragement through my latest substack. Go well 🙏🏽