seeking moments

Lately I have been struggling with self-care. I often let myself and my body down by not providing it with the proper care and love and nourishment that it deserves and craves. I often find that I am just unable to gather the motivation and strength to dedicate a few moments to bring myself joy. I am unable to be satisfied with my presence alone, and I have a hard time validating my existence without another person beside me.

I grew up as an only child, which often meant spending long periods of time without seeing other people other than my parents. My fear of loneliness bled into every aspect of my life, starting from the discomfort and fear of being alone to the desperate desire of wanting other people to like me so I wouldn’t have to spend long periods of time alone with my thoughts.

After moving back home with my parents, I have been spending a lot more time secluded from my friends and taking more time to explore my interests and understanding myself better. Before moving home, I lived with my significant other and we were around each other constantly. The qualm about being in a long-term relationship with someone is that you get so used to being with another person, you forget how to spend time by yourself and appreciate your own existence.

Spending time alone from everyone else has had its moments of clarity and appreciation that I have not had before. I see my friends quite infrequently and now have a greater appreciation for the time and energy it takes to make time for another person and accept them into your space.

Though I will not lie and say that spending time alone has been absolute bliss of clarity. Spending time alone has also brought on a lot of frustrations, insecurities and moments of absolute sadness that the pandemic has only intensified. Finding new ways to regain peace within myself without external help has been difficult, but it’s time for me to stop depending on others for my sadness and to find ways to relieve and breakthrough my pain.

After moving home, I’ve been watching the sunsets more. It’s something that I wish I had done more often when I lived in a beautiful city a moment away from the iconic flatirons. I’ve been thinking about how the days go by and nothing lasts forever, and how that is the natural order of life. I’ve taken more time to appreciate the sunsets and its beauty, and how it lasts for a moment, and when you look away its beauty is suddenly gone forever. The sun sets every single evening, giving a unique show every time, but only a portion of living things will give it its attention, and that is the beauty of life itself.

I saw a video earlier this week that brought me a lot of peace about how maybe life is more about appreciating moments, than the expectation of moments lasting forever. Maybe certain things in life are really only meant to last a moment, before going on to the next. In life we all wish for things to last forever and never want to let go, which is why we celebrate life beyond its passing, and try to preserve the things we love.

Maybe we should be appreciating the moments in life and allowing the memories to occupy a kind space in our minds and letting ourselves be free to new experiences and appreciating new moments. Our lives are so short and limiting ourselves of our experiences because we are unable to let go of moments that may be tarnished due to part selfish desire and part the inability to let go and be free of our experiences.

I believe that once we are willing to let go of things that we believe to be longer than moments, we will find a freedom and a new care with how we perceive life and begin to romanticize being alone and appreciating the present life instead of finding ourselves in hopeless situations. Finding comfort in being alone and being selfish with your time and your life is sometimes necessary in order for us to take the time that we need for ourselves.

Springtime Sadness

Yesterday I stood outside of my apartment taking in the warm sun rays and fresh air from the comfort of my porch. No one else was around me as I closed my eyes and took it all in. It then suddenly occurred to me that the first day of spring had already passed, and I have been so distracted with the other crazy things going on in my life.

The first day of spring was actually almost a couple weeks ago, starting on March 19. I have been so caught up on the recent news of the coronavirus and preparing for it that I haven’t even had a chance to be thankful for warmer weather ahead.

This past month was probably one of the longest months I have ever had to endure with the amount of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty that came with it. Everyone’s lives are different than they were a month ago, which is incredibly difficult to wrap my head around. I wish I could say that I am glad for March to be over, but April only brings similar promises as March, and may even continue to get worse in terms of how we handle the coronavirus in the United States.

Although things may not be going great on the outside, I am grateful for my current health and that I have my wonderful partner beside me during these stressful times. It’s really important to be able to take a step back from everything and relax, panicking is only going to substantially increase your anxiety. Everything will pass, including this virus.

A little over a year ago I was in the hospital being treated for sepsis. I was in the hospital for 10 days then spent an additional 6 weeks at home with my parents in my own quarantine. I wasn’t allowed to leave my house for fear of infection, and not many people visited me since my family lived far away from my university. This virus is just a reminder that if I could get through several weeks of isolation once, I can surely do it again.

During this time, you may feel pressured to be productive during quarantine and to show off quirky quarantine projects. This can make the days seem daunting with all of the work you may have to do. I just want to say that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed and it’s okay to not be okay. We are experiencing something so unprecedented and it suddenly happened and uprooted all of our lives. It’s okay to take a step back and take some time to regroup.

Times are tough, and instead of focusing on everything that is going wrong, I am trying my hardest to remain positive. Although things are not ideal, I appreciate the little moments in my life where my friends and I have found new ways to interact virtually and appreciating my apartment and its amenities. I am grateful to also have a partner who loves me and takes care of me and helps out by going outside and getting us our groceries so I am not exposed.

Times are tough, but do not forget to appreciate the little things.

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solitude

I believe it is time to be more candid in my posts, instead of hiding under the mask of metaphors and rhymes, and sentences with seemingly no meaning, but is a double edged sword. It’s been a really rough few weeks, and I still far from where I would like to be. Everything recovery-wise is going smoothly, and I am physically doing a lot better.

Over the past few years I have spent the majority of my time surrounded by others, enjoying the freedom that I have, and keeping myself busy really. I made sure that I was busy with schoolwork, my social life, and my on-campus internships. I didn’t have a lot of time to reflect on myself and reflect on what I really wanted out of my life.

I was so busy distracting myself and following dreams that I thought I had wanted, that I forgot what really mattered to me in my core being. Yes I love psychology, yes I really do enjoy business. I enjoy bringing the two concepts together and seeing how psychology and business intersect and thrive. However, I had forgotten what had mattered to me before coming to college. Before I had conformed to my college campus life.

I had forgotten my dreams of becoming a writer, something that I have dreamt about since I wrote my first novel in fourth grade. Though the novel was basically a spin-off or a fan-fiction, if you will of: “A Series of Unfortunate Events” by Lemony Snicket, (though now it’s ironic that it is so fitting to my current situation), I had loved writing. Now I write academic essays, I’ve perfected the art. At this point writing an essay is second nature, and I would have to thank my high school for that.

Fiction and poetry has always had my heart, and blogging is a bit different. I don’t know what the boundaries are. With fiction and poetry there are no boundaries, you write whatever comes to your mind, or whatever comes from the heart and soul. However with blogging, I had always found it incredibly difficult to keep it up and to be honest, this is probably my eighth time trying.

But blogging doesn’t have boundaries either. For me at least. It’s a boundary-free platform I could write whatever I want. Hell, I’m probably screaming into an abyss right now. I guess the hardest part of blogging and why I always end up failing, is that it’s difficult to keep up. Before I struggled to think of topics everyday and I felt restricted to what I could talk about. I guess I put up boundaries for my self, or was pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

These last few weeks has allowed me to rediscover myself. I find that I have matured in ways that I needed to be. I needed to become tougher on my decisions and learn to walk away and let go. I always have a tendency to let people walk all over me and ask why I’m not flat enough.

I have been learning to love myself again, not that I hadn’t before, but I am not used to the lack of attention I am getting. Before, I was constantly communicating with others, walking around outside, having a purpose, and getting validation of just existing. External validations help with confidence, it helps with love because it gives you the facade that you need to believe it yourself.

It is not wise to trust on other people’s validation and happiness if you cannot create your own. So I have found little joys in life, more appreciation for easy mobility. I am essentially useless. I cannot work out, not that I did a lot of that before anyway. I cannot lift anything more than about ten pounds with my left arm and nothing more than five pounds with my dominant arm. I have literal baggage that I have to carry around where ever I go as they are attached to my body.

Being here in solitude, I have found it incredibly hard to be comfortable with my loneliness. I wasn’t accustomed to the quiet house with creaky floors. I wasn’t accustomed to the quiet footsteps and the polite knocking. I wasn’t used to being surrounded by people on a consistent basis. It all went from endless noise to uncomfortable silence.

Silence with just myself. Maybe what makes it so uncomfortable is a result from being surrounded by noise all of the time. I haven’t actually been by myself in a very long time. Alone with my thoughts. It’s been awhile since I’ve done that.

However, as time goes on, I find that I am becoming less uncomfortable being by myself. I would not go as far as saying that I am completely comfortable, but I am trying to get there. The past month has been a roller coaster of emotions where it’s making it more difficult to cope. Being in a hospital for ten days really does something to your mental health. Writing is cathartic, which is why I always tend to write more when I go through something traumatic.

Despite it all, I am recovering very well. Everything looks great and I am pretty much healthy I just have to finish out the next 19 days of IV antibiotics. It’s been a hell of a year dealing with my health issues but I am nearing the end.