can i be honest.
on how the truth about my own feelings has allowed me to happier for others.
‘feeling like rachel when monica got engaged’ i texted my best friend.
She knew what I meant. She always does.
Maya1 is an Aquarius and despite the stereotype, I find her to be very intuitive. She’s relentlessly honest with herself and others and I think that’s why she’s such a safe space for me.
We met in Honors English in high school during an icebreaker. She’s the one who remembers the story out of the two of us. I always forget because in my head she’s been there my whole life, even in the shadows, until I was ready to turn and greet her.
Maya has seen me ugly and sad, two states of being that keep me soft and warm beneath the calcified layers of my independence and steadfast emotional control. Maya has seen me at every stage of my evolution but most importantly, Maya has seen me conflicted.
i. maya & me.
Two days ago, my sister got married and it was the happiest day of my life. To see her walk down the aisle with stars in her eyes made me feel accomplished, though I was there alone. Since I was born she’s been my Princess Diana.
But on Monday night, I texted my best friends about the way I was feeling.
‘it’s a combination of my period and just feeling like i’m running out of time even though i’m not bc i’m 20. i know my sisters are 10 and 14 years older than me so it makes sense for them to have found their person and be married but i still feel so lonely’.
That night, lying in my sister’s bed, I stared into the dark and decided to engage with honesty. In that moment we were together, hand in hand as I looked at the contents of my brain and how it ran parallel to my heart.
The truth is that I want to be in love so badly that it makes me feel pathetic. The truth is also that this feeling is normal. The third truth is that I was both immeasurably happy for my sister and devastated at being twenty without any sort of real-world relationship experience.
I was conflicted and so the first emotion I felt was guilt. What the fuck is wrong with me? Lately, I feel like I’m always asking that question. It drops from my mouth like a blemished pearl and rolls around because no one’s there to pick it up and give it back with its answer intact.
The guilt was amplified by my role in the bridal party: maid of honor. I should’ve been feeling nothing but joy and maybe stress. I should’ve been thinking of anyone but myself.
I have this terrible fear that I’m horribly selfish and no one has found a means by which to tell me. I also have this ridiculous fear that I’ve done something wrong all the time and that means I constantly worry that if I don’t check on the people I love or respond on time I’ve done something to hurt someone.
I guess I have this fear that I’ve hurt someone without me knowing and the thought of causing someone pain without realizing is worse than being intentional about it. It’s odd to realize that this is also a by-product of having parents who didn’t communicate about how they felt so I have to speak about everything all the time.
So naturally, I immediately sat up and texted Maya. My layered name necklaces beat against my collarbones like a golden heartbeat as I watched the screen for those three grey dots.
Please tell me how I’m supposed to feel, I thought. But I know better.
Maya makes me feel what I feel even if it fucks me up. It’s a good thing because I can compartmentalize better than anyone I know. I feel everything (crybaby princess) and when I’m overwhelmed, I just. . shut it off.
It’s like slitting your own throat just enough so that you can live with both the scar and the knowledge that you did it to yourself. Maya forces me to look at the blood.
As expected, Maya laughed at me a little and said: ‘most people in their twenties feel the exact same way.’
And the thing is, I know I’m not the only one but it felt so much better to read that text from someone else. But why can I never be honest about it without villainizing myself?
ii. let everything happen to you.
I’ve never liked self-help books. My mother loves them.
There’s always been this kind of burning in my throat when I read them. I feel like I’m in a clinic and some white man is berating me for feeling sad for myself or others, for letting myself get affected by the state of the world.
I feel that a lot of self-help content constantly rejects complicated feelings and often is just toxic positivity.
And I don’t mean to say that I don’t believe in helping yourself, in saving yourself because I do.
You were born alone and you will die alone. It’s something my dad says often and something I’ve internalized. It doesn’t mean that I have no one, that no one has loved me. It means that I will go on to whatever waits for me after with no one’s hand to hold but my own, until everyone arrives in their own time.
It comforts me. Mainly because I know and love myself. I’ve been taking the time to learn and listen to her. This idea that my walk into “heaven” will be just me, naked and small—a six-foot angel on her own is immensely comforting in a way I can’t explain.
But still, the self-help genre just doesn’t work for me. It’s the same as spiritual bypassing, a phenomenon coined by John Welwood. Welwood writes:
Spiritual bypassing is a term I coined to describe a process I saw happening in the Buddhist community I was in, and also in myself. Although most of us were sincerely trying to work on ourselves, I noticed a widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.
When we are spiritually bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to rationalize what I call premature transcendence: trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it.
A lot of my extended relatives do this and it’s made me pull away from them. I am so emotionally messy that I stain everything around me. I am difficult, I am hard. I can’t pray that away and I am still worth loving regardless.
God can only save so much. She gifted us with free will and so Adam and Eve walked out the gates. Deep down, I think I would’ve done the same.
All this is to say, I don’t do well with pushing things down. I think about it forever and I have to get it out. But I’m slamming my body weight against the top of a mental box I have, a hundred feet inside of me, to keep others comfortable.
That makes me a fucking liar.
iii. حقيقة ḥaqīqa ‘truth’
The same Monday I texted my friends was the same Monday on which I began my morning with an episode of my favorite Australian podcast.
While my nail tech chiseled my gel tips into a soft almond shape, I listened to the hosts discuss a viral Cut article on motherhood. Anastasia, the author to whom I relate immensely, wrote about how motherhood was just a simple shift for her. She didn’t become a Mother™. She just loved her daughter and moved forward with her life.
The comments on the article itself were divided and one miserable Mother™ went as far as to imply that Anastasia may need to be on anti-depressants. Out of curiosity, I did some surveying on Reddit and found that many women found her article to be reassuring and timely.
One of the hosts then offered her own opinion of the responses the essay received and it made me sit up straighter, my fingers tensing which caused my tech to remind me to relax (I never can. I don’t know how she stands me.).
‘I think people just don’t know what to do with honesty.’
And yes, we don’t.
Truth transforms. It introduced change because it’s just how things are. It reveals a lot if you’ve been hiding it and I think it terrifies us because of that. I think of how so many people boast about being blunt and brutally honest, but even that to me is a facet of a lie.
You have to make a performance—your bluntness, your brutality—because on a level you are still uncomfortable with the thought of being honest. It’s like how now I realize I am a people pleaser, even though I say I’m not. It’s honest but I hate the way it makes me feel.
But surprisingly and quietly, the more I engage with candor, the happier I am.
iv. oh yeah none of that shit matters, i love you.
Engaging with honesty when it comes to others’ milestones and achievements has allowed me to be more genuinely happy for my friends than before.
Acknowledging that I may be sad at first (i.e. Maya moving out of her childhood home that was five minutes away from me) or envious (i.e. Aliya2 graduating earlier than the rest of us in our group) doesn’t ever replace the joy.
It enhances it. It’s like a drug or how I imagine one must feel.
The happiness I feel after floods me as if it’s broken through the mud to come wash me clean. I’m almost euphoric in the way it strengthens my love for the people around me. I’ll do anything to support them in the moment and every second after.
And I don’t think I’d feel that way if I didn’t allow myself to feel everything else. The conflict inside of me burns my body like a phoenix and I sit in the ash after, smiling so hard that my skin splits and my pleasure bleeds out of me.
Burning provides warmth.
My sister’s wedding? The best day of the year.
Yes, I’m sad and I’m lonely. Yes, I worry that no one will ever love me. I’m the final girl of three daughters and I don't know where to start. Some nights, it eats me alive. Some nights I don’t think of it at all.
But nothing will change that two days ago was the happiest day of my life. Because even if I never get that, she did.
You know what I mean.
v. maya & i.
So, we’re in the car together.
I’ve been thinking about [x]. So, I turn to her and say,
“Can I be honest?”
She begins to smile and I think about the curve of her mouth.
— allyson. x
EXTRAS.
my current visual vibe via my pinterest:
what i love to smell like right now: click me & click me too.
some things i’ve read that are staying with me:
an important question: sophia winnikoff ( i love this series. )
- is a gem. i cried lol. #crybabyprincess. )
Names changed for privacy.
Names changed for privacy.
this was so beautiful. i understanad you perfectly and i really send you the biggest hug- you are a kind and amazing person and i am sure life will lead you to something equally wonderful. the feelings you express are some that are so complex yet you beautifuly out into words. thank you for such a lovely piece 🌷💕
i loved reading this! you are so raw and...honest!!