Don't Think Too Hard

On the 27^th of December, which is always my favourite day of the year because it’s all done, finished, over for another 363 days, and I can breathe again, I could not enjoy my packet of O’Donnell’s salt and vinegar crisps along with my half-pint of Guinness because it hurt. It stung. I grabbed my lower lip between my finger and thumb. I pulled it down and showed my husband where I had chewed an extensive hole in the soft tissue. I had been clamping a piece of my own flesh between my teeth and biting hard on it for days, possibly weeks. “Ugh,” said my husband as he surveyed the damage. “Look,” I said as I pointed to the three large spots that had taken control of the left side of my face. Something huge was also manifesting on my neck. “This is what December has done to me,” I said. “I haven’t had acne since 2002”.

“85% of mums said they don’t feel rested at all after the Christmas period, and feel they need another holiday to recover, with 46% wishing they had fewer family commitments and more help from relatives over the festive period. 72% of mothers report their mental health is at its lowest over Christmas, so do take care in January to rest, prioritise yourself and fill your cup,” it said in a magazine I was reading.

There was a young man serving at the bar. “Did you have a good Christmas?” asked an old man as he paid his bill in cash. “Yes,” he said. “I got an air fryer”. “Are you not a bit young for one,” replied the old man. “No,” said the proud air fryer owner. “You can cook a whole Christmas dinner in it”. “This is real life,” said my husband as we listened to their conversation on the merits of a kitchen appliance and watched a woman wearing a woolly hat unload most of the food from her plate into some tinfoil before she’d even started eating.

I wasn’t sure what had instigated the self-harming of the front inside of my mouth. “There’s a pervasive stench of cannabis on this bus,” said the woman sitting beside me on 23 December. She had been staring at me for some time. I reckoned a conversation was imminent. “I think it’s the guy checking the tickets,” she said. “That would be interesting,” I said. “My husband can never smell it,” she said. “I’m going to get some last-minute presents,” she added. “I’m going to get my hair done,” I replied as I contrasted our priorities. We were both avoiding looking at the man with the mobility scooter. The driver had helped him on but as soon as we moved off again, he had stood up, lifted the scooter and turned it to face the opposite direction. “What time is it?” he had shouted at his fellow passengers. “I don’t want to be late for my breakdancing class”. And when I smiled politely, he said, “What are you laughing at?” and I remembered why I never make eye contact on public transport. “Do you own a Lamborghini?” a man who may have been a hair-washer asked me a couple of hours later as I was being pummelled by a massage chair, staring at the ceiling with my head bent backwards over a sink waiting for something to suffuse. “No,” I said, thinking they ask odd questions in this salon. “They’re clamping one outside,” he explained. A small crowd had gathered. Phones were out. A traffic warden was having his moment. And I knew he was only doing his job but there was an element of punishment in this. And I wondered was this real life too, simply wanting someone with a Lamborghini to have a bad day.

On Christmas Day, there were jokes in the crackers I hadn’t bought but felt obliged to compromise on along with the Shloer. “How do sheep greet each other at Christmas?” asked my youngest daughter. “Don’t know,” replied the table in unison. “Merry Christmas to e-wee,” she answered. There was a momentary silence until the first person laughed. “It’s you,” I said. “It’s spelt like e-wee but pronounced like you and it makes no sense whatsoever”. “I didn’t know that,” she said. And I wondered why we laugh at people who don’t know the things we know, and I also knew we would remind her about this joke for years to come.

Instagram said I should choose a word for the year ahead. It would help me stay focused. It would define how I would show up and live my life. Instead of a rigid resolution, it would be a gentle yet constant reminder of how I could create positive change in the world. There were examples provided like peace and adventure and balance and delight. But the only word I could think of for 2025 was revenge and I wasn’t sure what this looked like, and I was still mulling over what Macrinus had advised in Gladiator II. “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury”.

As I prepared for 2025, I had also been contemplating my new framed print which was sitting on the floor because I hadn’t found a wall to hang it on and I knew I’d probably never find a wall to hang it on. “Don’t Think Too Hard” it said.

But I was thinking too hard, thinking too hard about the better version of myself I hoped to become in a few days’ time as one year ended and another began. This mainly seemed to involve beetroot. I wanted to inject its purpleness directly into my veins. I wanted to feel its vitamins circumnavigating my body. I had added a bunch to my online shopping. I would follow more beetroot recipes in 2025, extend my repertoire of colourful meals. I would boil this root vegetable, add some herring and a dollop of horseradish, garnish it with dill and serve it on rye bread. I would feel good about myself.

I’d been collecting things in my head, things that had moved me, things that might be telling me something, things that might explain the mystery of this real life I was over-thinking. “At great risk to himself he saved you and that sounds like love to me,” said Sarah Lancashire, as the spymaster in Black Doves. “It’s success syndrome,” said the office manager in Strike: The Ink Black Heart. “Once all your bills are paid and you’re on top of your game, you start filling the void with booze and unsuitable women and cigarettes”. I reckoned the best bit of Gavin and Stacey was when Neil the Baby drove off and we saw Nessa, the mother, realise that her child was leaving home. She didn’t shed a tear, yet it was all there in her eyes. And the most remarkable thing I had listened to was the journalist, Róisín Ingle¹, describing her cancer diagnosis, the life-changing news she had received in December, one year ago.

“But I think when somebody confronts you with something like that, that you’ve got a disease that has spread that they can’t necessarily get rid of, but that they can manage. Of course, you’re going to be now thinking in a different way about your life, about the meaning of your life, about the days that you spend and how you spend them and where you go and what you do. But then in another way, you carry on being the same flawed person that you always were. I’m still lazy when I maybe shouldn’t be. And I’m just very happy to have an ordinary life,” she said.

As we were taking the tree down and my daughter was walking round and round it, holding the lights as her dad rolled them neatly to pack away in a box until next year, she said, you know some people just put them away in a mess. They write themselves a note, apologising to their future Christmas self.

And I thought about how I never wanted to apologise to my future self for the better version I’d never become and for being the same flawed person in 2025 that I’d always been, and I decided even though it wasn’t one word, but four, “Don’t Think Too Hard” would have to do for the next 363 days of my real life.

And when the online shopping came, they’d substituted the beetroot with carrots.

1. The Women’s Podcast.