That’s being nailed by life, the place where you have no choice except to embrace what’s happening or push it away …Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape—all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it - Pema Chödrön
So far 2025 is about meeting my edge. Meeting my edge and not running, not fully, but wanting to.
In mid-April, I ventured to a Thai island in the Phang Na Bay and the entire journey to get there is where I met my edge so hard I smashed against it. One cancelled flight, multiple delays, stopovers and a missing suitcase and I was hanging on by a thread by the time I arrived at my bungalow surrounded by palm trees. Yes, I reasoned with myself, I can survive a week in a foreign country in only the clothes on my back. I’m going with the flow.
I had small, gnawing doubts about the trip weeks before I left New Zealand. It was my first ever proper stopover on my way back to London. Before this, it never occurred to me that I could take my time. Meander a little. Break the long journey up. Be less wrecked by jet lag at the end.
I was meeting a new friend who I’d met last June at Glastonbury. Meeting at Glastonbury is like meeting on Mars and subsequent hang outs like coming back to earth with a thud. But, yeah, ok? Thailand is what I need. It’s what we all need. Yes, I messaged my friend, let’s meet there. I’m open to suggestions.
The doubts could’ve been a warning to skip the tiny Thai island and just go straight back home, to my other home, but I didn’t want to and now I know why. The journey there could’ve been evidence. A sign from the universe with me pointing a finger skywards saying, there, I knew it. But one thing I do know as a 38-year-old is that we humans know nothing. I know how to meet my edge and I know nothing.
On the third day of the trip, I burst into tears riding on the back of a shared scooter. For days I could feel the emotions bubbling and whirling inside me, shapeshifting and moving, unsure of an exit point or if they even wanted to leave the confines of my body. Up and down they went and I’d always tap them back down, quiet their roar. Not now, not in Thailand, not in front of someone I hardly know.
My friend and I are flying down a single lane road without helmets, hardly passing anyone. It was Songkran and we’d been soaked only once the day before. “Happy New Year!” yelled a woman and a couple of kids as we accelerated away on our scooter. White-knuckling the back of the scooter, I smiled at their joyful faces as I felt far from it inside. I succumbed to the bucket of water thrown on us for luck. Yes, I thought. I want to be lucky. I’m open to luck and prosperity this new year.
Like the bucket of water, I succumbed to the feelings finally breaking free and let salty tears roll down my face. Instinctively, I covered my face with my hands and tried to explain between gasps.
“I’m not stupid, you know!” as if I had to remind myself.
All it took was an innocent question about finding a cafe which I couldn’t do and a laugh interpreted through the lens of someone feeling defensive, on edge. My eSim wasn’t working. My brain wasn’t working in high humidity. I wasn’t working, either.
The tears were a threshold we used to cross over to a place of open communication and vulnerability. Tension and uncertainty gave way to a softening. Outside a cafe we sat side by side and said all that was unsaid. I speak more freely when I don’t have to meet someone’s gaze even if they can’t meet mine. My friend confirmed what I’d suspected. I looked out through blurry vision and batted mosquitos away during the hottest part of the day. I wasn’t just imagining it all.
I met my edge on the back of the scooter and I didn’t fall over the way I had so many times before.
On our final night, we’re sitting side by side again on Pasai Beach after dinner. This time we’re so close that the sides of our bodies are pressed together, our arms and heads fall against and wrap around each other.
“Why is your head wet?” my friend asks.
I keep my gaze level. I’m scanning for a fixed point on the horizon to quell the tears that still want to release. I see what I believe to be Mars shining bright in the night sky but is actually a plane on its descent. I steady my voice, unsure whether words can come out without a wobble or a squeak.
“Because I washed it."
Because the one bucket of water thrown on us didn’t feel lucky enough. Because everything feels precarious and uncertain and I needed to stand naked under running water to feel grounded. To come back to myself.
It’s during dinner he says that I feel too much like a friend. That he needs a much stronger connection to be intimate. I’m confused because we were always friends and a baseline of friendship is what I always aim for, but the feelings rising in me say otherwise. The feelings are also historical, triggered anew long past their initiation date.
When I hear something that stings all I want to do is get closer. If I can press my body against theirs, for a moment, I can pretend it never happened.
I feel the past surge up to meet me, I feel all the times I’ve been rejected before, my brain conveniently flashes back to the time I was dumped in Lisbon and left crying at the airport. The familiar thick gloop of emotion rises in my chest and tears threaten to stream down again.
I’m meeting my edge again but this time something’s different. I’m used to it and a quiet acceptance pours over me instead of the tears that usually accompany a situation like this. I sit with my feelings. I listen as my friend calmly talks and I catch myself in real time. I feel my feelings so well that they slowly dissipate and settle. Oh, is this really all we’re supposed to do? So many years of numbing strong emotions with alcohol makes this all brand new to me.
It’s not until I’m back in London that I fully process the low-level anxiety of leaving my home, again, and my family and the weird, tense week in Thailand. I’m dog sitting in London Fields and this home is now so familiar to me that muscle memory sets in; I’m on autopilot and my body moves without thinking, arms unconsciously reach for the exact cupboard with my favourite mug and opens the plastic container with the chamomile tea I like.
One afternoon, lying on the sofa, I feel the pause before the crack. The crack within that expels the heaviness, the trapped emotions, what I still couldn’t say to my friend. I’m crying in a way that reminds me of being 4 and tripping on the footpath while running. There’s silence and then there’s pandemonium. No overthinking or suppressing, just pure emotion pouring out of me.
I’m crying so hard that the dog, Mr Chips, perches beside me and lays his paw on my hand. I want to laugh at both the absurdity and sweetness of this moment but decide to cry some more. I’m not done yet and I’m learning that this is the way. Mr Chips doesn’t leave my side until I stop.
A few days later, just as I feel I’m gaining some equilibrium, a work email titled “Hey Girlie xx” comes through from my manager. I immediately know that it’s code for “Your work contract is finally, after almost 10 years, ending.”
My heart races, fight or flight kicks in and I sit staring at my laptop screen fixated on the words I can’t believe I’m reading.
I’m stunned, I’m alive and I’m teetering on the edge again.
I shut my laptop as if that can erase the words and go outside.