Never in my life have I been so violently confronted by my brokenness than in the first year of separating from my husband in early 2023.
My body and mind, both of which had historically existed as a kind of backdrop to my life thus far, suddenly took centre stage as grotesque, malfunctioning vessels of pain.
I began looking for answers.
I scrolled through hours of TikTok, desperately browsing the remedies proffered by the algorithms, who somehow knew my marriage was over long before I’d packed up my things and moved out into that godforsaken airbnb with the leaky windows and the jar of pre-rolls I stocked it with to stop me from becoming an alcoholic.
It started with manifestation.
At a time where the chasm between where my life was and where I wanted it to be lay yawning and endless in front of me, in came the law of attraction.
All you had to do to manifest the life you wanted, I learned, was to completely change the way you thought and felt about the world. It really was that simple.
Fake it till you make it. Delulu is the solulu.
And so I said affirmations: “I am happy, I am loved, I am enough”. I said them 33 times in a row, 3 times a day, and I waited patiently for my life to change. I waited and I waited and I waited.
When nothing changed, a heavily-filtered 20-year-old by the name of Psychic Brianne diagnosed the stagnancy as a symptom of my low vibrational frequency. The fact that my life was falling apart was, she explained, neither here nor there. My circumstances were irrelevant, and nothing but a sorry excuse for languishing, and I needed to dial down my pessimism and tune into a frequency of abundance.
I put myself in nature.
To feel depressed sitting on a log by a lake, I discovered, was considered spiritually superior to feeling depressed on a sofa covered in Dorito dust.
Now it’s true that depression feels the same wherever you’re sat. Nevertheless, I suspected that the transformation I sought was not to be found rattling around with the stale pizza crusts in the box on my living room floor, listening to the couple next door arguing for the 5th time that week about whose turn it was to take the chihuahua outside to defecate.
When the present failed to deliver the enlightenment I needed, I decided instead to look to the future.
I booked readings with psychics and tarot readers.
I nodded eagerly at the bullseyes (yes I am grieving, how did you know that?!) and overlooked the inaccuracies (no, my father hasn’t passed over - at least not as of 10 minutes ago when he texted me asking for my Netflix login).
I took the crystals they gave me and put them in my pocket along with their prophecies: surprise but welcome pregnancies, reconciliation, and the sudden and unforeseen financial windfall that was due in October but so far remains lost in the post.
In the autumn, as I found myself still childless, alone and staring down the barrel of my overdraft, I discovered the sacred wisdom of gut health. Did you know that 95% of your serotonin is produced in your gut and not, as we’ve been tricked into believing, in your brain?
I hired a nutritional therapist.
I purged myself of alcohol, gluten, sugar, refined carbohydrates, additives and tuna (mercury, you see), and gorged instead on fermented things: kombucha, kefir and kimchi.
I sent weekly reports on my mood and my menstrual cycle and the condition of my hair and nails - these formerly unrelated things that, it transpired, held the key to my happiness all along. It worked extremely well until it didn’t. Somewhere around the 71st date and cacao energy ball I realised I was still quite depressed.
I threw myself into work.
I delivered inspirational conference talks about existential crisis and burnout, and everyone applauded my candour and strength. I woke up on the morning of one such talk in Manchester to discover I couldn’t breathe properly and went with my friend to the hospital where we watched make-up tutorials on her phone in between chest X-rays, blood tests and ECGs.
“You’re stressed” the doctor told me. “No shit” I laughed. He didn’t laugh back, but he gave me a packet of valium and god bless his soul for that.
I went to my therapist.
I told her I hated my life and I hated my home and I needed something to change. We talked about childhood wounds and she put me into a deep state of relaxation and asked me what I needed, and I said I needed to travel.
I went to Paris.
I drank wine in cafes on the shore of the Seine and gazed into windows of antiques shops and walked around art museums trying to feel something profound. I got a spontaneous tattoo from an artist called Sam who smoked a joint while he hand-poked a moon into my upper right arm. I’m now having it laser removed.
I ate a pastry and had a panic attack on the Rue des Petits Carreaux that felt artfully melancholy and chic in a way that a panic attack at home could never compete with. I took one of my valium and came home the next day.
In amongst all of this I saw friends and I dated and I cried and I broke things and broke hearts and broke and broke and broke.
I exercised and I drank too much and I stopped drinking and then started drinking in moderation.
I smoked weed and ate gummies and thought about taking mushrooms or ayahuasca and then remembered I’m terrified of hallucinogens.
I partied with people I didn’t like and failed to return the calls of people I did.
I meditated and did yoga and I re-read The Power of Now and I tried to be present and failed.
I thought about how small my problems were compared with all of the enormous problems in the world today and I felt guilty and remained depressed.
And at the end of all of it, I’m still no closer to the answer.
Socrates said that a wise man knows that he knows nothing, and I’m afraid he might have been right.
Not knowing is an inescapable part of the human experience. Your lack of answers will loom over your life like a spectre you cannot exorcise, and it will grow larger with every passing year you’re lucky enough to be here.
Our only job, it seems, is to go boldly into the wild unknown. Embrace the futility and find some meaning in amongst it. The mess, it seems, is where the living happens.
I don’t have a silver bullet and I’m going to be okay with that.
I really am.
Any day now.