I only aspire to be like Bridget Jones

PalmI remember a day like the one I'm writing from, a slow and pitiful Sunday. I was at home and the world was falling apart. I had a night out with my friend Clara and was doing everything I could to put off getting ready. From the couch, the blanket weighed more than all the anguish I—for some reason—carried inside. The idea of having to utter a single word immobilized me, sequestering me a little further in that dim corner where I felt safe and sound. I cried because I was sad, and I cried because if I got out of there, I'd never be sad again. I thought about the questions my friend would ask me when she saw me—"How are you? How are you doing? And that?"—and the disappointment in her eyes if I answered them all honestly. Another time, I would have pretended. I would have made an effort to take her comfort and free her from that responsibility. But I simply couldn't. Having to hide reality made it even more unbearable.

Today, Sunday once again, it seems incredible to me that I hadn't opted for the most reasonable course of action sooner: grabbing my bra and dragging it over to my friend and saying, "I feel terrible, this is happening to me." I wasn't aware then of the humility that surrendering lacked. In retrospect, it requires a certain modesty—or, if not, courage—to show vulnerability, to release your unease and give it to another. Breaking down in front of someone is losing control, embracing passivity and letting yourself fall, knowing that they'll pick you up later. It's an act of generosity and trust that I've learned to recognize and value. So that day, with my friend Clara, I didn't make excuses, barriers, or shields. "I want you to know that today I'm not okay. That there are things that aren't right, and that I don't have the solution either." Telling her this was far more intimate than any other shared experience—more so than holding each other's hair together to throw up on a night out or changing our bloody menstrual cups in front of each other. I let her put the safety net in front of me. It was like becoming a puppy, unprotected, visible, and openly in need of care. And it felt like the perfect show of love.

This moment came back to me a few days ago, while I was listening to the conversation between Helen Fielding –the author of the book series ofBridget Jones's Diary– and content creator Juliana Canet, at the Magaluf Expanded Literature Festival. In a way, Fielding came to tell us that "we exist in those small moments of comfort, when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and make mistakes." And that the personification of this was Bridget. "Nobody wants a friend who says everything is fine and their life is perfect. What we want is a friend who comes to you and says, 'You have no idea what's happened to me!', with a glass of wine in her hand," she argued, finally convincing me completely. Everything will be fine as long as we have this: friends like Bridget, who wrap us in their duvet so we can eat ice cream together, protecting us, like a shelter. Now I only aspire to this with the people I love, to be like that trusted flannel pajama set—comfortable, honest, complicit—so they can confide all their weaknesses in me.

I've been thinking about this these past few days, which sometimes seem like a very long Sunday. I don't know if it's the beginning of autumn, when life has become a syncopated state between what we'd like—locking ourselves in the house and drinking herbal teas—and what we submit to—a routine with a full calendar that doesn't let us put our butts on the couch, not even on the weekend. But the truth is that fragility is the word that best defines my state and the ecosystem that surrounds me. I make decisions as if I were building a house of cards: each seemingly light and harmless "yes" ends up creating an unstable result, which we're only able to admire with concern, and which keeps me constantly on guard, anesthetizing my other emotions.

Precisely today, while it's still Sunday, my vulnerability has collided with another, that of Andrea Gumes, in her latest Grades, from where I sent this message, which embraced me like Bridget's Nordic: "I don't know where she is emotionally, if she's stunned, disoriented, or with that ready response when they ask you how you are and you say: 'Well, let's get on with it.' Mine." Yes, Andrea, let's get on with it. And that's fine.