Dead-ication

These past few months were rough. Capsizing in a boat in torrential downpour, amongst wind that shifts the objects not fixed to the ground or heavy enough to lay inanimate on shore. How did I get here?

I just turned 30, and I began writing this the night before. I was pouring myself into words, a culmination of the storm striking chaotically through my thoughts. I had a panic attack, and then became consumed by it’s lingering repeated threat for months after. The mind is so powerful, and mine let me know that I was ignoring the whispers and decided to yell. It took my conviction and turned it into questions. Mentally, it was all about weathering the storm to hopefully get back to who I was accustomed to being, with no regard for what the future would look like until it was resolved.

You don’t plan for a future when each day is a battle.

Chaotic, a little emotional, confusing. I digress, it was the easiest way to start. I often spotlight my flaws and failures, but on the cusp of a new decade, the approach became the steps I took to get better, hoping that I don’t need to return here to find out again.

I never really thought much further ahead than 30. I see kids, and other images, but not on the timeline, as they aren’t targets, but assumptions. It always concerned me that I didn’t think too far ahead. I felt ominous, but it’s probably because I idolise so many tragic tales who I’ve already passed in age. I don’t really feel 30, but that all depends on what 30 feels like, which is different for everyone, obviously. The expectations change on the audience. Young kids think you’re old. Old people tell you they’d kill to be 30 again. Context, and perspective, ultimately a sign not to be too influenced by your audience as it’s always changing.

Breaking down the number 9 is the last step for turning 30. It’s the last single digit, so when you see this number it often represents a cusp. The clock is about to tick over and start at the numerical base again. Makes you think of a list of items and goals as a theoretical and emotional deadline approaches. Who enforces this? Is it yourself? There is no answer, maybe it’s just easier to say time is the decider. The most valuable currency, after all (before energy and money – of course.)

29 taught me resilience, as I needed to grasp weakness and stare it in the eye. I cried for the first time in 5 years. I received lot’s of different advice, and most was cut from the same cloth:

“You don’t get rid of it, you just deal with it”.

Anyone who knows my personality, knows that isn’t my approach to anything. Build the wall and I’m going to run through it. Except, that headspace wasn’t there, and if it was, I couldn’t reach it. My mind was a shaken watered down version who found belief in these statements. What? Forever? Like this? Please no.

How can I be so different to how I had known myself forever; where was my madness of conviction? That false sense of security that felt real, now seemed like a lucid dream. Something that I yearned to return in reality.

There was a lot going on in a short timeline, and I guess I was looking in a crowd for a resolution. I couldn’t identify it, so it felt more overwhelming – anxiety. I lost some close confidants near me, some who I held dearly and wanted to help – pain. My motivation dropped when I wasn’t around people who had ambition. I said it to an ex once:

“hang around with shit people, you become one.“

Mediocrity was tapping me on the shoulder, as was it’s close friend, complacency. The safety became appealing. My creative drive seemed to vanish overnight, and it took all my future thoughts. My notes of old lost the context. Days were a blur of nothingness, frustration, resentment. How do I find myself, where did he go? It wasn’t like I wasn’t looking, but my impatience ate me like an apple. I couldn’t stand to wait, so I didn’t know where to start. Truth be told, there is a way to get rid of it, but it’s not a defined path. It’s long and winding, however it’s worth it.

So, to find the old me, I had to take care of the present self first.

The mind is powerful, it creates the blocks that stop you, which is the ultimate pain of entrapment. Falling into the middle of the ocean at night, without any direction where land lays.

Instinct is often the first choice, so follow it. It’s your outer layer that surrounds your body, it’s fighting for you, not against. Once it leads you and you discover that you can trust it, the ability to break down blocks returns. The land will appear, and the fear of drowning starts to recede, slowly, slowly, slowly.

My typical approach of aggression wasn’t the way, and neither was alcohol. They’d worked for awhile, but as wisdom grows in time, so should patience. Lay still, lean back into the water and listen to your heartbeat. Now breathe. Emotions last 20 seconds, and we amplify them, or we let them pass. Choose the ones to let pass methodically. Hear them, feel them, and release them. Light rain, no thunderstorms.

I was the one who built the wall, nobody else. Of course it’s going to be more difficult. That’s the thought process. But, if you built it, you can go through it. Your mental hands can only create using the bricks that exist inside, so what made them, was made by you. Acknowledge them, and break them. One by one. There’s a fine line between breaking it down, and having a break down. Don’t forget.

As much as you can weather the storm, you are the storm.

~~C.f~~