Day Twenty-Six

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Today was one of those days where it was taking every single ounce of my energy to keep myself afloat, and my usual methods for getting myself out of a bad place were doing jack-shit. I started with conscious breathing, then tried some meditation, then went on to yoga, then  drank roughly a liter of water under the pretense that if none of the aforementioned could pull me out of it, it must be dehydration, and then, after emptying my bladder twelve times only to find that I was still miserable, I admittedly sat cross-legged on my bed and tried exceedingly hard to make some tears come out. Yeah. Turns out I'm too much of a hardass to cry on demand. Who knew. 

Height-complex-related jokes aside, it took me hours to get why nothing was working, but finally, I figured it out. I'd forgotten the most important rule of being conscious. You've got to be. 

So long as everything's dependent on all these uncontrollable factors, we'll never feel okay. It's so insanely easy to let everything get in the way; the fact that your lungs still ache from the two-weeks-ago sickness that you refuse to refer to as anything less dramatic than "the plague," or the fact that your house is old and your town is college-like, and every little creak, tap, or drunken frat boy in the alley way outside your window makes your nerves tense up. The fact that, admittedly, you kind of suck at yoga, or the realization that you're not really a hardass--you're actually just so upset that you're past the point of crying. Probably the most frustrating, the fact that all this attempted-self-healing is stopping you from the mounds of hey-I'd-like-to-graduate-eventually that you've got chilling on your desk. 

Conclusion: When we're in a rough place, we have to acknowledge two things. 1). Nothing is more important than getting ourselves out of said rough place, so stop looking at it like it's time wasted, and 2). the only way to heal ourselves is to view uncontrollable factors not as road-blocks, but as a foundation on which to build ourselves up again. Accept them, because they're not going anywhere. You, on the other hand, can choose to stay knocked on your ass, or you get back up on your feet.

• Show two people how much they mean to me

(1). Obtained chocolate from one of the pretty-sure-this-stuff's-infused-with-crack candy stores in town. Then proceeded to share it with this lovely lady right here. 

(2). Gave my number to a friend of a friend after he told me that his schedule doesn't always line up with other people's, so sometimes he eats alone. Yeah, there will be none of that. 

Help out a stranger

None today. I'll aim for two tomorrow. 

• Live instead of sleeping thinking

Impulsively tuned into a live broadcast thingy after getting a last-minute e-mail from one of the philosophers/life coaches I've been following for a while. Had to put my homework on the back-burner--after being reminded that multitasking is not, contrary to popular belief, a gender thing--but whatever, that's fine. While an hour and a half might seem like a crazy long time to just sit and listen, I heard a lot of things that I really, really needed to hear. Proof that we usually find what we're looking for as soon as we decide we're ready for it. 

• Do something good for myself, by myself

Even though it didn't do much for my psyche, yoga did manage to knock some kinks out of my back. I now feel 15% less like a senior citizen than I did upon waking up this morning. Then again, I still plan on being in bed before one, and I did ingest raisin-flavored oatmeal earlier today. 

• Write here and write elsewhere

Affirmative, negative. 

• Make a conscious decision to leave my comfort zone

I decided a really long time ago that I wanted to be the one person who always picked up her phone, always had something positive to say, and always made time. Today I took a breather. Two friends came to me asking for help, and--after double-checking that it wasn't anything too intense--I told them I wasn't in the right frame of mind to do anything except heal. I've been there for them before, and I'll be there for them tomorrow, but I've finally come to terms with the fact that no one can be 100% dependable 100% of the time. There's nothing wrong with focusing inward every once in a while, because if you're not alright, you're in no place to help anyone else anyway. 

• Take three pictures of three beautiful things.

(1). See this candle, this mural thing that's painted on the side of one of the buildings in town, and this picture that came out way cooler than intended due to the reflections in the glass. Trippy shit. 

(4), because apparently I can't count, see below. 

Meditate

Yeah. Three entire hours of it--the legitimate kind, after I decided to just let everything be what it was. I've got enough endorphins floating around in my head to sedate a bear right now. 

• Look up at the sky 

Crazy bizarre weather today. It was switching from sunny to flurrying in five minute intervals. 

These through-the-clouds scenes are gorgeous, but I'm way overdue for a full hour of clear skies and countless stars. 

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