These Days You’re Kinda Okay by Laura Besley

Fiction

Photo by May on Unsplash

Imagine you’re forty-something and you’re kinda okay about who you are these days and

although you never thought you would be, you are, and decide the reason you’re kinda okay

these days is because you’ve done some therapy and read some books and you’ve forgiven

your younger selves for the mistakes they made, but maybe to be more than kinda okay, to

be completely okay, you also need to move on, to forget, so you ask your younger selves to

leave, please, and they do, and for a short amount of time you wonder whether this is what

it feels like to be content – no unwanted memories popping up of puking in gutters or

waking up in unfamiliar places next to unfamiliar bodies or wetting the bed as a grown-up

because you’re so stressed and so tired; no feelings of guilt or regret or that friend you fell

out with because you were more afraid of going to a party than of disappointing her – it’s

just you, here and now, and the silence of your brain is strange-but-in-a-good-way, then

blissful, then strange-but-in-a-bad-way, then weird, then lonely and frightening, and you

realise that you need those other yous, the twenty-something who drank too much and the

eighteen-hour-day career-crazy thirty-something, even the anxious and shy child who had a

permanent blush, you need them, you do, to make you feel like a kinda okay forty-

something, so you pace and worry and fret, then stay up all night watching rom coms and

eating sugary popcorn and by dawn you have a plan and you find pictures of your younger

selves and make posters with MISSING at the top and stick them to lampposts and walls and

in the supermarket and think your younger selves will come back and make you kinda okay

again, but nothing, nothing, and... and… you have to manage like you’ve always had to

manage, so you look at the clouds through the dirty bus window and you work eat sleep

repeat and slowly, slowly, you start to feel kinda okay again, you enjoy cooking and eating

healthy meals, you sleep eight hours a night, you do a little exercise, and you’re proud of

yourself, possibly for the first time ever, and then, then, and only then, do you come home

and find your younger selves sprawled across what passes for your front garden like a still-

life drawing and you cry and shout WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? and WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME? and they say we’d never leave you, we just gave you some space, to see whether you could be this kinda okay forty-something all on your own and you can and we’re so proud of you and the thirty-something says Shall we order pizza? and the twenty-something says I’ve got wine! and the child says Can I stay up late? and you all push your way into the narrow little house you live in, knowing that these days you really are kinda okay.

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Author's Note:

For me writing is self-care. I started journaling and writing fiction as a way to process my thoughts and feelings around new motherhood. Writing allowed me the time and space to do that. Ten years on, I still love the quiet excitement of writing, whether that be the furious flow of a new draft or the slow choices of final edits. There’s often a lot of myself in my stories, which is perhaps why I care so deeply for them. I'm always thrilled by an acceptance and couldn't be happier with Literary Namjooning as a home for this story.

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LAURA BESLEY writes short and very short stories, enjoys exploring big themes in small spaces as well as creating within constraints and across forms. She has published four collections, most recently 'sum of her PARTS' (V. Press).

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