How To Be
By Erin Deborah Waks
My best friend once told me the thing she loves most about me is that I know exactly who I am, what I think, how I feel. It's funny, because it's something I hardly notice about myself. It just seems so natural to me. I've always struggled with inauthenticity, and find it almost impossible to lie, hide how I feel, or even momentarily pretend to be someone I'm not.
But I don't think I could describe myself so succinctly. Not in a word, a phrase, a paragraph even. We're all far more complicated than that. But who we are is not really about the dark and twisted parts of us, our demons and our battles. Nor is it anything to do with our milestones and achievements. It's about the little things that make up the whole nucleus of a person. I'm defined by the tiny moments where I feel most alive. Most at peace.
Like those perfect ten minutes when I drink my first coffee of the day. It's in the meditative nature of doing something just for me, the habitual routine of spending those few minutes alone (but never lonely) every morning, that I find myself.
It's in the dish I order when my best friend and I go to our favourite Italian restaurant together. It's not the food, or the place itself, that marks who I am, but the certainty of a friendship based on years of commitment to each other. That tiny promise of 'I love you' shown in knowing each other's orders, and in talking about the mundane aspects of life interspersed with the divulsion of insights unique to only us.
I find it in the moments when I have to drop everything to jot down an idea, a thought. Like I'm doing right now. Sometimes the urge is so strong I have to buy a new notebook when I find myself overcome with thoughts and feelings on the rare occasions I don't have one with me.
It's in the books I devour, one after the other, to fill my mind with thoughts other than my own. In my love of brunch with my friends, the comfort of avocado on toast mixed with oversharing details from our lives. In the movies I love, the poetry I read, the clothes I wear. The hours I can spend listening to music on my record player while lying in the bath, the focus I have when exploring an art gallery, the vivacity with which I can walk around in a big city and soak up the atmosphere.
And it's in the way I love. Writing to tell people how I feel, buying stupid but thoughtful things for those I care about, overthinking when I feel something is afoot. Sometimes the weight of how much I care about the people close to me is too much, but most of the time it's just enough to remind me why I get to live in connection to others. We're all figuring out who we are, what we want, and how we choose to be and feel in the world. So I'm grateful it's something the people I love recognise, appreciate, about me.
It's just never occurred to me to be any other way.
