It’s ill-advised to start your new year in January. The sun rising and setting within a 20-minute window causes a kind of a perma-misery. Then there’s the odd semi-Catholic need to atone for December by doing Dry January. I’m all for people stepping back and examining their relationship with alcohol but going back to drinking as usual the other 11 months of the year suggests an act of penitence. January is about survival. For sitting by the hearth, under heavy shawls, waiting for the spring. Imagine explaining Dry January and maintaining a calorie deficient diet to our ancestors just trying to get through the winter. This is the time for hunkering down and hibernating, not expending precious energy making protein balls that are meant to taste like chocolate but only if it was covered with years’ worth of “on top of the wardrobe” dust.
Luckily, for those of us who spend January under a Sad lamp saying to our loved ones that we “won’t see another winter”, the good old Celts gave us an out. The festival of Imbolc, the new year and spring celebration is much more aligned with the Irish weather. It doesn’t kick off until February 1st, which means it gives us all an important grace period to come up with and get cracking on those new year’s resolutions. It makes sense to give us more time to mull them over as we eat the last of the discounted Cadbury Heroes until only the grim fudge is left, forcing us to ask ourselves if this is the way we want to live.
In 2025 my hope is that I have more difficult conversations, even if it means inviting more confrontation into my life. Not just any old confrontation. I won’t join mothers’ Facebook groups to comment “that baby looks cold, put some socks on her” under every photo or stick my finger up at every passing motorist.
I want to talk to the people who care about me, to encourage them to tell me if they have an issue with our relationship so we can resolve it together and I want to be able to do the same for them. This is some people’s non-negotiable and others’ worst nightmares. There are people who would rather ingest a used loofah found in the Electric Picnic showers than deal with conflict. No matter how minor. The spectrum of being comfortable with conflict is long and non-linear. I have no problem reminding a senior politician live on air that they haven’t answered my question and would appreciate it if they tried again. But I have only ever been able to say “that’s great thanks” to hairdressers, even if they gave me a bowl cut or, in one memorable event, turned my hair both yellow and purple at the same time. We may feel comfortable telling our boss we can’t fulfil a deadline but can’t tell our mothers that we won’t be going to the early Mass. I have a friend who is very good at empowering her clients to set boundaries but grabs a Mass pamphlet from the box outside the church to leave casually out, to make it look like she went. Just because she’s not ready for that conversation.
The people who really care about you shouldn’t abandon you over tricky conversations
His leer was so filthy it would have you reaching for hand sanitiser. A man over 40. A man who knew so, so much better
I pine for my favourite Irish discount store. It has everything I never knew I needed
‘That would have never happened in Ireland,’ my boyfriend said after my trip to Australian A&E
Unfortunately, for me personally, leaving conversations for when I’m “ready” seems to be a product of procrastinating and delaying the inevitable pain rather than having the space to think of tactful phrases. The longer I put the hard conversation off under the guise of “finding the right time”, the more resentment builds. This is dangerous because resentment is the glitter equivalent of our emotional world – once it gets in, it gets dusted over everything and it’s hard to get rid of it. It springs up from unresolved feelings that seems to slosh around the belly and it comes out, eventually, in small leaks and big gushes.
It’s a mistake to think just because you’re not shouting, your anger is under control. It can slip out in passive aggression, snide comments, silent treatment, undermining behaviours and all the other 100 little ways you can slowly poison a relationship because you don’t want to “be the angry person”. We can create anger and resentment too by dancing around issues and telling people what they want to hear instead of giving them bad news. “Clear is kind, unclear is unkind,” wrote Brené Brown. The worst relationships I’ve had were caught in the squish of “maybe, kinda, sorta” half truths and three-hour looping fights that could have ended with a yes or no answer. The most toxic job was in a workplace without direct feedback, meaning if someone had a problem with your work it would feed back through a terrifying game of Chinese whispers, causing awful paranoia.
The people who really care about you shouldn’t abandon you over tricky conversations. Be clear. Be kind.
