If Only…

Tonight I watched the movie Eat, Pray, Love. Not for the first time, maybe my third.

For the first time, I didn’t find myself in envy of the travel or the food or even the beautiful Italian words rolling off strangers’ tongues. I just sat there thinking, if only.

If only life had pause buttons. That allowed me the space to breathe, to step out of the heaviness that follows me everywhere, especially when everyone thinks I am smiling.

Grief doesn’t leave, it just changes its outfit. Some days it is the designer outfit other days the knock off falling sort at the seems or the second hand version that’s trying again, Other days grief hides behind the words ‘I’m fine’.. But it is always there, tugging quietly at the seams of all the grief outfits I wear.

Work has become this place where I feel both strong and fragile all in one day. It is where I pour out energy I don’t always have, where I lead, hold space, and care deeply.  But it is also where I feel most exposed with my speech.

Then there is my marriage. The part no one writes the script for when life doesn’t look like the plan we both imagined and young adults planning our life ahead.

He does not always get, what it takes for me to simply show up each day. The small, invisible decisions that hold me together. From taking a deep breath before walking into a room, holding back tears during a meeting, the message from a family member, all events that involve food where I just have to be ok. It is unfair for him to get the brunt of my mood but he takes it.

So watching Julia Roberts wander through Rome, India and Bali with her notebook and newfound self, I didn’t find myself dreaming of pasta or sunsets, I dream of space… to not be ok, to rediscover who am I through the outfits of grief I wear.

Maybe my version of Eat, Pray, Love isn’t a plane ticket or a grand escape. It is small, quiet and allowing myself to cry and to actually ask for help whilst allowing joy to exist in moments, even if it feels undeserved.

Because maybe if only doesn’t mean I missed out on a dream I had maybe it is a whisper, reminding me that it’s okay have more softness towards myself in the one I already have.