Melanie Campbell

I bought a little house, in a town I didn’t choose but chose me. My house is close to my parents’ house, in a small city in northern Ontario. I really want to help them age in their home. They worked hard for their house, and it’s beautiful, and they deserve to turn kids bedrooms into home gyms.

I moved in on Monday. It’s very early Sunday morning and I just finished hosting guests for the first time in my new home. It was strange and lovely to welcome people into intimate space after two years of living in my parents’ place.

When I took possession of this house, I was not excited, I was not happy. All I could see was the warts. The uneven floors. The missing faceplates on outlets. The squeaky stair treads. The cheap-outs on the renovation done two years ago. Why do the tiles end there, how come there’s moss on the shingles, why is there a higher moisture reading in the basement? Am I safe here? What will this cost me?

My warts are the house warts. The crack in the foundation, the problem with the roof. The small bit of illegal wiring. The imagined clown in the basement. The mess left over from someone else. The sharp bits that weren’t finished, the inconvenient bits. The parts that need re-doing.

And, like me, the bones of the house are solid, and it’s attractive. There’s more than enough to be good. Really good. Good life good.

Me and my friends have been and are navigating end of life care for family elders. It sucks.

I got my first experience early-ish. In my thirties, in another country, far away from my people. My dad died from aggressive lung cancer that metastasized throughout his body. It was two years from diagnosis to death. The hoped-for “cure” almost killed him halfway through, and after that it was palliative care until he breathed his last, in a room at a care facility in North Carolina.

I was so ill-equipped then. So afraid and panicked, so very angry and so very sad. It was like my psychic skin was flayed off. It was all too present. I was grieving for months before, for years after.

My relationship with dad was complicated and painful. He had left me so many times in my life, and then he left me permanently. And I tried so hard to be a good daughter, to help him through it, to be loving to him. Looking back, I am proud of myself – I showed up, I was useful, I was kind. I put him before me, no matter the cost. I slept in a makeshift bed in his room at the end so he wouldn’t be alone and afraid. I forgave him even though I still hurt. I was his steadfast companion in his last fight. I was brave for both of us.

And then he died and I was devastated. I was guilty for wishing he had died sooner so he didn’t suffer so much, I was guilty for wishing he was still alive for me. Guilty for all the times I was selfish or grumpy or furious or lazy. For all the wasted time. I made a torture chamber in my mind and chained myself there.

It took years to break the chains. Years.

I’m far better equipped now. And I’m not the only one who had to learn this process too early.

Now, mid-life, is when so many of us are facing this, some for the first time. How to let someone die. How to help them live well until the end. How to make peace with the imperfect nature of the relationship. How to be kind, present, loving, when your heart is breaking. How to make hard decisions. How to respect the wishes of the person who is dying. How to navigate appointments and doctors and treatments and funeral homes. How to stay hopeful in the face of death. How to fill up our psychic cups so we can keep showing up for them.

IT SUCKS. And, it’s part of life, yeah?

If you’re going through it, I am proud of you. However you are is ok. However you feel is ok. Whatever you are doing to get through it is ok. If you’re having trouble finding grace then you can have some of mine.

The hard part and the beautiful part is that this process will change, and you will change too. The hard part and the beautiful part is that you’re not alone, even though it’s so very lonely. The hard part and the beautiful part is that your grief is love.

They are like psychic bruises. They are tender and injured.

Some of them are tied to real injury, physical breaks and tears, disability. Some of them are emotional. There’s an ongoing lesson of pain. There’s the feeling of being other, less than, unworthy, defective. There’s the thoughts about how I am failing to meet the conditioned beliefs in my culture about what is beautiful, expected, celebrated, appropriate.

I am working really hard right now on radical self acceptance. I have been following thinkers and change-makers for a while, I have done research into neuroplasticity and recovery processes, and I am putting some things in motion. I have put things in motion.

The criteria for changing things varies. Like, I stopped wearing makeup. I love makeup and I used to wear it every day. I used to not leave the house unless I had makeup on. It’s that last bit that I decided to change, because that was a self-imposed restriction about what was required for me to face the world, and it inferred that I couldn’t face the world as-is. The not-leaving-the-house-without-paint was a buy-in to the conditioning, an action to reinforce this “belief” that isn’t mine – it’s the current culture.

It’s not a fault that this is my conditioning. And it’s something I can shift. I can change the choice and then see, what else changes? What shifts after this shift? (It’s interesting getting to know my naked face. And every so often I put makeup on and look at my face…and then I wash the makeup off. It’s interesting how fast I got used to walking out the door with a naked face. It’s interesting how fast I didn’t give any shits about it.)

A trickier one for me is fatness. I’m a fat woman. I’ve been various degrees of fat since my early twenties. Right now, in the range of fat bodies, I’m at the low end of medium fatness.

I got fat at a time when the western beauty aesthetic favoured a look dubbed “heroin chic”. Tall, tiny women that looked like they might blow away. So I hid my body, I wore billowing shirts and stretchy pants, and I didn’t make eye contact much. I was celibate for a long time.

And cultural conditioning said that fat was not ok, fat was despicable, fat was gross and lazy and stupid, fat was (still is) the butt of jokes. Fat wasn’t attractive or sexy. Fat wasn’t healthy. Fat wasn’t successful.

I tried things so that I could conform, or at least be a “good” fat. I restricted food as instructed by various eating plans. I pushed through multiple exercise classes a week. Bought aspirational clothing to shrink into – a nice dose of shame every time I opened my closet. Regularly talked about how fat was bad. Regularly talked about the last failure, the new resolve, the latest plan. Many different flavours of this over many many years.

It wasn’t sustainable. Food is more to me than fuel. And old injuries and chronic illness make exercise challenging. And whatever I did, whatever extreme measures I imposed, I was still fat. And when I stopped the extreme measures, whatever weight that was lost came back. Over and over and over and over and over.

Then the pandemic hit and I stayed inside and ate and drank for comfort. I stopped restricting and I stopped moving, and I only wore stretchy pants. Sometimes I would take a stupid little walk for my stupid mental health, but it wasn’t comparable to the fullness, and the stillness.

And now my blood tests show high blood sugar. Now my muscles are out of condition and I am carrying much more weight on my frame. The old injuries are difficult to manage. There’s a lot more pain. I had to buy bigger clothes.

The change: this time, when I bought clothes I chose pretty colours. I chose sizes that fit. Nothing billows except dresses that should. This time I have a bright pink bikini. I have rainbow glasses and rock band tshirts and sparkly hair clips.

The choice is to be visible. To make eye contact and to talk to people. In clothes that fit my body, with no makeup behind my kickass glasses, with no colour over my grey hair, without scraping off body hair. To be present exactly as I am.

It doesn’t feel like letting myself go, it feels like letting myself BE. It’s a big relief, frankly. I’ve regained a whole bunch of time and energy. Most of the time I feel freer, more relaxed.

I still have thoughts about my physical state that tell me I am “unacceptable” as I am. There are still very real physical challenges. I’m not “cured” or any other bullshit enlightenment thing.

And I’m choosing actions that are accepting of myself, right now. And the more I act this way, the more it IS this way. And feeling like I’m acceptable is changing other stuff – the words I choose, the conversations, the relationships – they’re different too. It’s like easing up on the judgement & criticism garbage has unclenched a bunch of psychic muscles in spasm. The weak spots don’t feel quite so tender, you know?

I was an expert at choosing unavailable people to love. Where the relationship was built on the inevitable, insurmountable obstacle of “not more than this”. It was upfront – this is where the limit is, this is how far we will grow. Very beautiful, sexy, joyful containers for the relationships, and once it reached a certain size that was all.

I chose this, over and over. Sometimes it was deliberate, sometimes not. And I had a really good time, mostly. There was a certain glamour, definitely a feeling of freedom, and maybe even a little smugness for taking a road less travelled. For wanting something different than the suburban nuclear family dream. It was kinky, and thrilling, and unexpected. I didn’t do laundry or groceries or bills with my lovers. Our time was intentional and intense. We weren’t distracted by anything real life.

I never played house as a girl, didn’t play bride. I read The Story of O waaaaay too early. My dad got distant when I hit puberty and he stayed that way until he died. I had no examples of “normal” romantic relationships that lasted. I had lots of influences that set me up to choose these unavailable people, these limited relationships. It seemed safer, given what I learned early.

I also learned early how to pick friends. I picked good ones, relationships that lasted. (I have a constant, tender heart.) I built a collection of friends and committed to them, grew with them, worked through things, made mistakes and made amends. I got clear on my values and ethics, I had hard conversations and mundane times and a crapload of fun with them. I built deep trust and the connection between humans that is soul food.

Sometime in 2018, there was a switch that flipped and wouldn’t flip back. I became completely aware of the pain caused by these beautiful, sexy, limited containers of the relationships with my lovers. I became intolerant to the lack of growth, the lack of possibility, the lack of commitment. I was starving for the depth and trust I had built with my friends, which was missing with my lovers. I had been uncomfortable before, I had felt shitty, felt shameful even, but I hadn’t been present to the pain.

(There’s a whole story here, but the switch flipped in San Diego, at a Days Inn that had seen better days in.)

It was horrific. Demanding all of my awareness. When that switch flipped I was surrounded, permeated, buried in the pain. The pain of not being chosen. The pain of being the last priority. The pain of knowing that I could not stay in the container, and the grief of losing what little there was. The pain of loneliness, of ripping my heart away from them. The pain of being the author of this pain. I cried until I was empty and exhausted. I raged. I cried.

And still I did it. I stopped all of it. The longest relationship took the longest to end. And it ended.

I haven’t been looking for anyone else since. It’s taken a long time to get through the grief. It’s taking longer to unpack the beliefs that set me up to seek these containers out. I still haven’t found my way to being able to trust my instincts in romance, so I continue to be single and I (actively AND subconsciously) repel any potentials. I don’t see them, even though my friends tell me they exist. I’m in a different kind of self-imposed container, for safety.

And here’s the thing – I think I would do (most of) it again. Including the pain, including the grief, including the solitude. I would take the road less travelled.

Because I know myself so much better now, and I had to go through it to get here. I am so proud of myself for being brave, for being resilient, for being so willing to love. I forgave myself for acting on what I learned early. I think that when I stopped engaging in these relationships I was being my own champion. I didn’t turn away from the truth when I saw it, and I acted like the person I want to be.

And I believe I had to go through the process to uncover the beliefs that made these containers the default. I had to figure out that the “safety” wasn’t safe or good enough for my heart. My tender, constant heart. And I believe that one day, I will find a relationship that doesn’t have a container of limits.

But as I write this, I can’t even imagine what it looks like. I can’t imagine what it is that I want. I can’t imagine what it feels like to be in a romantic relationship that I can be fully myself in, the way I am in my friendships. And if I can’t imagine it, how can I find it?

That’s the work.

We humans learn by stories. Greek playwrights used “catharsis” as a way to guide the brains of their audience through a human experience on stage. 

Recent studies have recorded brain responses of subjects as they watch a story. What’s freaking amazing is that the subject’s brain lights up as if the story is happening in real life.

So. Stuff happens.

And then, what stories are you telling yourself? 

Brains are great because they learn from stories. They listen to language, and believe it. They don’t fact check.

The big deal about mindset is that it puts you in charge of your stories.

The opening of a Dickens novel asks whether the protagonist will be the hero of their own story. 

Be the hero of yours.