All At Once
Tonight I took a bath for the first time in probably 10 years. I fried myself to a crisp in the scalding waters, threw on some Jack Johnson and had myself a little singalong. It was religious. In the 20-odd minutes I was in the water I felt the weight of a decade’s worth of stress leak out of my ears and a sense of mental clarity I haven’t seen in a long time. I have found a new hobby that I love so so much: taking care of myself. Allow me to elaborate.
Today I got a notification on my watch that I completed a perfect week, closing all of my rings and fulfilling my technology master’s wishes of not being a fat fuck for 7 days in a row. It’s been one hell of a journey. “I’ll start tomorrow” finally turned into today and I haven’t looked back. First it was just 20 minutes of exercise. Then a walk or two every day. Then 3 walks a day and a hardcore workout. Then a morning of meditation and jump-roping and going for a run and upper-body training and treadmill walks while watching community until my body could not physically bear anymore and decided it needed some rest. Today while my body recovered from the high of a perfect week and feeling better than I have ever felt I was anxious for more.
Now that my body is craving exercise and not sugar, my brain is also breaking free. My new routine is waking up at 7am, making coffee, writing in my journal, being mindful and appreciative of the life I’m in. This is a wildly stark contrast to my life even just a month ago. God damn I am happy. I am happy. I spent the majority of today in a somber mood and not feeling 100% but I still feel happy under the surface. That’s the key. If I can keep this core feeling of happiness alive then no amount of bad days can outweigh the determination of just wanting to be happy. When I compare today’s happiness to the past I’ve been trying to connect the dots.
Minimalism, identity, security, mental health, life: these are all topics I’ve been writing about, with questions I’ve been trying to find answers to for nearly 10 years. I have tried to mold myself into idealistic versions of people that I admire, tried to reduce my possessions to the bare essentials in an attempt to free myself from the burden of things, battled with wildly unpredictable and emotionally draining bouts of anxiety and depression that would leave me feeling so lost, so barren, defeated, destroyed, unwilling to continue my own life. I have moved 30 times in my lifetime. 30. That’s more than 1 move per year I’ve been alive on average. I spent almost the last 4 years living on an income that was as unpredictable as the weather. I’ve had no sense of security. And now, today, I sit here and write these words on the brink of tears, typing away on the one possession I have left that I haven’t had to sell off. But I thought about it today. Because now I have nothing. Now I am nothing. I am naked. I am free. I am using this time as an opportunity to turn off the machine in my head that creates all the noise. I’ve been reflecting on my past to try and paint an honest picture of the greatest question I’ve always wondered: who am I?
I spent so long trying to figure out who I was, searching for meaning in things and people and change. I wanted things to define me. I wanted people to validate me. I needed the universe to tell me who I was because I didn’t know. Maybe I was afraid to be myself.
I’m not afraid anymore.