Carrying your load

An Unloading.



That’s what I gave my poor friend Ashie as we “played tennis” the other night.


In fact, she gets a good bit of my unloading. To be fair, she’s unloaded her fair share on me as well. That’s what besties are for, right?


And to fess up, I have kind of unloaded the same load on her more times than I care to count lately. I mean, I’m not like sinking into a hole of depression and my life’s not falling apart or anything. I just have this overwhelming – Uuuuugh and Waaaaah mixture boiling right under the surface for longer than I’d care to imagine. I’m certainly not living my day to day life in misery. I am a blessed person and I recognize that most of the time, but that boiling mixture is ever present and comes to the surface more than I’d like it to these days.


It’s why my blogging has been…err…. struggling lately. Anytime I get deep enough in my head to write anything of interest, all my thoughts go to my load. *insert potty humor at will* And, to be completely honest, I can’t unload my load on my blog ‘cause people around whom my load revolves read my blog.


So there. I won’t.


But to the point of my blog today…


I unloaded… all sweaty in the car while the air conditioner dried our sweat in what maybe only Southerners recognize as the most amazing cool that ever is – your sweat evaporating in the car’s air conditioner, that is.
I don’t think I’ve expressed a new thought about my load in ages to her. It’s generally the same old frustrations and fears and worries and stresses. And she listens and agrees and chimes in in all the right places.


She’s a really good bestie.
But then she said, “I’m worried about you.”
I don’t think it was a conversation stopper. We didn’t break down and cry or drive off a cliff all Thelma and Louise or anything. It was just a comment in the middle of the conversation.


But here’s the thing. The next day, I woke up and put that load on my back, but it didn’t seem so heavy. And the boiling either cooled to a simmer or moved further away from the surface.


We didn’t really come up with solutions or any specific plan.


But knowing someone other than my Mama (big shout out there to the ones who worry about us always) didn’t just listen, but listened closely enough to know that it wasn’t just complaining, but a real load I’m carrying with no end in sight… it helped.


So here’s to besties and to really HEARING people and letting them know we hear them.




Love & Shipoopies,
Leslie