Unfeelingly fine

I had a reminder tonight, a thinly veiled nudge if you will, that as a student midwife I would constantly tell people that I was fine. I was called up on it so many times, told that I wasn't fine. They were probably right, particularly as they knew I'd say I was fine and swiftly scuttle off to sob in the toilets.

I was a broken shell of a woman, clinging on by a fingertip. A bitten to the quick fingertip at that. I had no idea how to fix myself or how to ask for help because I didn't know where the broken bits ended and the alright bits began. I wasn't even certain that there were any alright bits left in the end. I didn't know how to feel anything that wasn't anxious or afraid or vaguely suicidal. I expressed that jumble of emotions as fine. You can't get much further from fine than going to bed and hoping that you won't wake up in the morning. I didn't know how to feel, but I didn't feel fine and I'm not sure you ever actually feel fine. Fine is an unfeeling. Fine is: back off, don't ask because I don't actually want to tell you, please don't look beyond the surface and see the hurt, don't make me cry because I may drown you in my tears.

It's a year to the day that I hung up my student midwife badge forever, the day I got given my University of Southampton pin, the day I laughed and cried and opened my heart a little, the day I stared over the edge of the chasm that lurks between student and employed. In this past year I've finally learnt so many invaluable lessons, the most important of which being that when a midwife asks how you are she actually cares. She wants an answer that's better than fine, because fine is a dead-behind-the-eyes cop out. Fine is a petulant child putting her fingers in her ears and tunelessly babbling la la la la la la. A cracking midwife will tell you that fine isn't an answer and will know in her heart that if she gains your trust then when you're ready you'll let her in and explain fine. She'll do it because she cares and because she has heart and courage and broad enough shoulders to share your burden. She'll do it because she'll have had someone do the same for her.

Today I've considered fine. Fine is survival, it's hiding what's left of your soul because you're afraid it might drip out of your eyeballs without you realising. Fine is a waste of a life, it's a limp, bored, lonely half life. Fine lives in a fortress made of steel and it doesn't want visitors. Fine gets you to where you need to be until you realise that all the incredible people you need to help kick fine in the face have been trying to scale the walls all along. Fine doesn't let you see their beauty and generosity, fine puts it all in jeopardy as one day they may give up on you. Fine must have made the midwives, who are now my incredible friends, my anything but fine tribe, want to shake me because I was frustratingly and very evidently not fine.

You can't be a midwife and be unfeelingly fine for long because it's exhausting and you have to feel midwifery to do it well. Fine is toxic and draining but it can be necessary. Fine is a cocoon offering shelter and respite while your brain switches off and reboots. Fine is fine until you're ready to re-emerge blinking into the sunlight, ready to feel anything other than fine. Fine can become a prison, it doesn't let you plunge head first into a swirl of love and life and greatness and potential.