The party I almost didn't go to

The party I almost didn't go to was a Thursday night thing. End of the school year, the kind of gathering that gets planned in a group chat and feels optional right up until someone sends a "you coming?" text and you realize you have to actually decide.

My brain started building its case immediately.

It had good material to work with. It was late May, which means the people around me (the ones I love, the ones I work beside) had been a little frayed at the edges. Shorter fuses, quieter lunches, the occasional hallway conversation that ended two sentences earlier than it should have. And my brain, which is very good at pattern recognition and occasionally terrible at conclusions, had filed all of it under: everyone is done with you.

I couldn't point to a reason. I just had the feeling. The one that says everyone in the room has privately made a decision about you, and you're the last to know.

I had a reason for every fear. I'd already started composing the "sorry, going to sit this one out" text in my head.

My husband asked me one quiet question. He didn't argue with me. He didn't tell me I was being ridiculous. He just said something like: what if you're wrong?

Ugh, don't you just hate when your partner is right? 

So, I went.

There were tearful speeches. Drinks that kept getting refilled. Laughs that came from somewhere deep in the chest, the kind you haven't had in a while - the kind that remind you these are actual people you love, not just people you survive the year alongside. I cried a little. I didn't expect to.

On the way home, I kept thinking about cognitive distortions. Which is a very clinical thing to think on a Friday night, I know. But that's what it had been. My brain built a story: everyone is exhausted, everyone is irritable, therefore the irritability is specifically aimed at me. The prescription it handed me was avoid. Protect yourself from the room.

I did the opposite.

And the room gave me back something I didn't know I was missing.

I think there are a lot of people who know this pattern. People who spend all year helping others identify the stories their brains tell them — the distortions, the catastrophizing, the quiet belief that they are the problem in every room. And then May comes, and the year gets heavy, and somewhere between the last difficult email and the stack of things left undone, their brain starts narrating their own life in the same voice.

You are a burden. They don't need you there. Your absence would be a relief.

It is almost never true.

The garden doesn't apologize for taking its time, and you don't have to apologize for what you needed this year either. The months that feel like nothing was growing — those are the ones where the roots were going deeper. The party you almost didn't go to is the one that hands you back a piece of yourself you'd quietly given up on.

Two weeks left. You are closer than you feel.

If your brain has been building cases against your own belonging lately - I want you to know I understand. I almost stayed home but I'm so glad I didn't.

If you're someone who holds everyone else all day and could use something beautiful arriving in your actual mailbox — that's exactly what the Wild Petals Postal Service is. One hand-painted postcard from me to you, every month. I've found that small things, when they show up at the right moment, are the ones that end up on the fridge.

Keep blooming,

Julie @ glad you're here co.