Just to let you know, this post describes an incident of domestic violence. I hope you read on, but I want you to feel safe in doing so.
I planned and wrote this out for like forty minutes and then I accidentally copied over it, and I had to start again! Fingers crossed this works.
I recall a scene from a novel I read in 2017.
Dying in the First Person by Nike Sulway is a wonderful book and I would absolutely recommend it. Seriously, I would go so far as to ask your library to buy it. The book is about a woman who repatriates the man she lives with, from the Netherlands to Melbourne, and goes into the relationship between him and his brother. In a part of the book, the woman talks to his brother about the dead man's beliefs.
One day, she was baking a cake, and he scolded her, because he thought that it was wasteful.
She kept on going, trying to play with him. He got more aggressive. "Bake bread for the homeless, not cake for yourself, you [...] princess!" She didn't flinch, dabbed some of the batter on her finger and put it on his nose. Then, she picked up the cake and put it in the oven. He reached in, took the cake back out and then assaulted her.
Immediately afterwards, she describes a moment she had with her father when she was younger. Her father was a skilled decorator, but he sucked at cooking. So he would make her an intricately decorated cake on her birthday, and they would both sit there and pretend to enjoy it for five minutes, before acknowledging that it was terrible. They would take the cake and have a food fight. Then, they would go out and have some store-bought cake and coffee and watch the sunset together. It may have been horribly wasteful, but it was beautiful.
That story hit me pretty hard when I read it... so the first thing I did when I got home was finish my birthday cake. Of course.
It's not often that a book makes me cry, but that is one of the few stories that makes me emotional, especially when I re-tell it.
Sometimes you have to be selfish, to enjoy life. Having standards and beliefs is fine, but sometimes the more peaceful thing to do is to let someone JUST be.
Since then, it has formed part of my personal philosophy. I see it so much in life. There's a lot of judgement around people who ONLY do what's expected of them and don't put extra effort into their work, for example. I have got a post coming up, which is mostly about weight loss and eating disorder behaviour, but it reflects this idea as well.
After all, to quote E.B. White:
We teach our child many things I don’t believe in, and almost nothing I do believe in. We teach punctuality, particularly if the enforcement of it disturbs the peace. My father taught me, by example, that the greatest defeat in life was to miss a train. Only after many years did I learn that an escaping train carries away with it nothing vital to my health...
Moral of the story, [...] anyone who gets in the way of cake! This sentiment also applies to pie.
Seriously, though, please don't be ashamed to be. Being is good enough.. and we're very grateful that you are.
Emergency, police & ambulance (24 Hrs)
Connect with a lifeline crisis supporter (24 Hrs)
Suicide callback service (24 Hrs)
Kids helpline (24 Hrs)
13 YARN