How Are You Really Doing?

Hey Friends!

I have missed talking with you. I have missed hearing about your lives and sharing pieces of mine. How are you!?

A few years back, I had my heart broken over a dream man, my work environment was “complicated”, and school was providing that to-do list that titled itself ‘IMPOSSIBLE’. I also had started group therapy because I had been experiencing social anxiety for the first time in my life. All the while I had a leadership position in my church that demanded a lot of time and energy – of which I was depleted.

Being one of those people who hide all their problems and actually find it therapeutic to hear others’ struggles, I was spending hours of my week by the sides of multiple different friends, asking them the question,

“How are you?”

This was my life – full of other people’s problems, welcomed distractions, unfinished to-do lists, and ignored exhaustion. If someone would have passed me on the street and said hello, how are you? I would have smiled and said “Great! And you? – fully hoping to receive an unorthodox response from that stranger, yet completely unwilling to provide the honest, yet unorthodox response myself.

Moral of the story, I look back and I don’t think I was doing very well and by golly, I definitely was NOT “Great!”

A few weeks after I had had my heart broken, a new friend came over unexpectedly, as he often had since we met. We were sitting in the run-down, nasty yellow-used-to-be-white-tiled kitchen, dishes were piled in the sink. I was sitting in the accompanied, dated kitchen chair more durable than anything I have sat in since then when my friend asked the question, “How are you doing?” I said, “Doing pretty good!” He came in for our normal greeting hug, but before I could release he held me tighter and asked slower this time,

“How are you really doing?”

My eyes immediately welled up with heavy tears. “I’m really okay…” Before I finished that sentence, my shoulders sunk, my body became top-heavy forcing my emotions to fold. Denial had reached its ledge. “I feel overwhelmed, I guess. Gosh, I don’t know why I am crying!” embarrassed, throwing the tears off my cheek, I continued, “I just think a lot is going on, ya know.” My friend quickly sunk into the neighboring sturdy chair.

We sat there in that old kitchen for hours. I paced as I spilled my frustrations, my exhaustion, my inhumane feelings toward others, the worst of the worst all over that pale table. That two-week-old friend, the one who sat with me that day, is now my husband. I asked him later on what urged him to ask how I was doing the second time. He explained, “Because you are the kind of person that is always asking others how they are doing, you seem so put together. You are always smiling. Often, it’s those people who need someone to be there for them like they are there for others.”

That day I had a hard time painting a reality where I needed others. It made me feel like I had a problem, or that I needed fixing. My pride didn’t approve of that kind of talk. So instead, for years I had described myself as a friend that doesn’t need much but can give everything – a definition unfairly weighted, not to mention blatantly inaccurate.

I do need people. I need friends, and friends need me.

After facing the reality of my own emotions, conversations became exhilarating! Talking to people gifted me with many human experiences.

There is so much happiness that comes into my life when I simply sit down with someone, look them in the eye, and take a moment to see how they are. This last week, I decided this kind of conversation is long overdue between ya’ll and me.

Whether you are the best you have ever been, the worst you’ve ever felt, or somewhere in the middle,

Let’s have a conversation.

And when I sit down and ask how you are, I am actually asking, “How are you really doing?” It’s that second question that lets us sink into our true selves and really talk, person to person.

I can’t wait to hear from you 🙂 Stay healthy, safe, and sane my friends.