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As an overweight child and teenager, I would always say to anyone who asked me how I was, that "I am fine." But was I really fine?
She goes through the day, sifting through her struggles, but if you ask her she says- “I am fine.”
She wakes up each morning and runs her hands across her belly just to be sure that it wasn’t all a dream, but if you ask her she says- “I am fine.”
She logs in on her laptop and does her work well but she avoids that one, which she feels she is running from for a while, but if you ask her she says the same!
She is there for everyone and plays her role extremely well despite wanting to not be present at all, but if you ask her she says- “I am fine.”
She is like you and me.
The blanket response to the most asked question of “how are you doing?”
Is always-
“I am fine.”
For me, this response has meant so much in so many different scenarios.
It has been a saviour in times I didn’t want to share the real picture with anyone.
It has been the mantra I use to make myself motivated and positive.
It has been a lie I tell myself often.
Times I felt ‘not fine’, are the actual moments I needed to address the feeling I have, that screams and tells me that I need to stop and look at what’s not fine in me.
The magic trick of making myself believe I am fine has been an age-old tradition of mine.
As an overweight child and teenager, I would always say to anyone who asked me how I was, that “I am fine.” When in reality, I felt the strong emotion of eating everything and anything I could get my hands on. All the while telling myself that I am fine!
Once I have eaten 4 cupcakes I will feel happy. That never happened. But I was always “fine.”
As an unhappy adult in my 20s, for a lot of reasons that life weighed heavily on me, I would always say I was fine but would eventually hide behind spending sprees and adventurous outings. Somehow it never made me feel better.
After years I realised that I couldn’t run from my feelings and manipulate myself into feeling something else. I had to sit with them. Acknowledge them.
Turning 30 made me see all that I wasn’t seeing earlier.
The 365 days to my 30th birthday were laden with unlearning my pride that stopped me from acknowledging whatever I felt.
I stopped telling myself I am too good for anything that is lacking in my life.
I stopped questioning the universe.
I stopped being bitter.
I stopped expecting others to show up for me, instead, I did that myself.
I sat down with my feelings each day, sorting through whatever I felt so that I could move on.
One of the most powerful sentences is, “I am not fine, but I will be!”
And the day I acknowledged that was when I started feeling genuinely fine, no escape needed.
And that truly is the definition of I am fine.
Image Source: Still from short film Name Plate/Blush, via YouTube
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