Honesty

For a while now, I've been waking up in the middle of the night with heart palpitations and a deep sense of loneliness. To distract myself from these negative feelings, I've been working a lot of overtime hours. So much so that I burned myself out and got sick. I'm recovering right now and decided to catch up with Adri over some coffee and croissant. I'm not sure how our conversation veered in this direction but she told me: "You know you can rely on us". I took a sip from my tea and replied: "I just don't want to burden you guys with my pain". I didn't want to cause unnecessary worries. That is, until Adri said something that completely changed my perspective. She said that if I didn't want to share my struggles with my closest friends, then they also felt like they could not share their struggles with me in fear of "burdening me". I had never thought about it in that way but it made a lot of sense.  By trying to keep things inside of myself, I inadvertently created a distance between me and those who cared about me. It's as if I was holding up a sign saying: "no thanks for your support! I can do this on my own." Now that I've realized this, I have to actively remind myself that it's okay to ask for help, to break down and to depend on others when the going gets tough.  That's what friends are for. Yeah, this post has nothing to do with the content of the photos but the realization happened at Automne Boulangerie.