Please Remain Seated

What a week. In terms of an emotional rollercoaster, this one was the triple loop. I wish I could make a cultural reference to a famous rollercoaster, but I've always been one to hate them. Genuinely hate them. Same goes for horror films. I don't do well with fear. Some people thrive on it. I cower and cry in a corner. 

So did anything precipitate this wondrous ride I went on? Well, actually, no. I've experienced some pretty traumatic and stressful events in my life (and conversely some exhilarating, miraculous ones) and this week was a flatliner. There were no blips on the radar or snags in the fabric. There was just my brain chemistry and the havoc it can wreak. 

I've been sober for 50 days. That's probably the longest stretch since I was 15 years old. What I've learned about myself in these past 50 days could fill a book, but it's a novel I'm not yet ready to share with the world. In case you're wondering, sobriety isn't easy (understatement). At least not for me. 

So amidst the ups and downs, how does one celebrate the beauty in life? Well, you know what, sometimes I have absolutely no idea. I didn't get to every day. I just didn't. Over the course of the week I went from fine, to lethargic, to existentialist crisis, to finding spirituality, to feeling positive about my life, to ecstatic. All of this culminated in a manic Monday morning which, to those of you who aren't familiar with these episodes, are a whole lot of fun and self-destructively dangerous. So the only thing I can think of to celebrate today...is life itself. Wow, what a ride.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Street Fight Aftermath

Image
I have been in hiding. I spent years on this blog revealing my truth, but then I became trapped. I somehow began to believe that I couldn’t share my reality anymore and that belief imprisoned me. It imprisoned me at a time when my mind had become a madman and was living to torture me. Haunted by the continuous splatter of sounds that were crunched, smashed, thrown together and weaved with a poisonous thread; a ricochet of memories, feelings, thoughts and voices. A downright cacophony of crazy.  Photo: Nicola Muirhead So, I shared. Six weeks ago, I took to social media and finally expressed how the last 18 months of my life had truly been in a post called “The Street Fight”:  “It’s been several months since I’ve posted. In the mental health narrative, we love stories of rebirth, renewal and redemption. We watch the phoenix burn and we are inspired when we see that phoenix rise from the ashes, but we rarely bear witness to what happens in between. Brene Brown calls
Read more

The Alphabet Years: A is where the adventure begins

Image
It’s 24 days into 2018 and I’m only now sharing my new year’s resolutions. I am, however, giving myself a pass because mine aren’t just for one year, they’re for 26. Since university, I haven’t planned my life more than a few months ahead. I thought I was a free spirit, but I now believe it was indicative of the opposite – one caged by fear. One that’s scared to plan and be disappointed; terrified to make goals, in case I miss the goalposts. The letter A is for... x While I had an incredible past year of achievements, I experienced something akin to daily stress fractures on my brain, which created fissures and cracks in my mind triggering mania and depression in rapid cycles. Now, I have chosen to unlock the cage: I’m committing myself fully to my creative endeavours all while travelling wherever this wild spirit finds itself drawn to, because that spirit was slowly dying. I was not in a good way. Now, here I am with the vastness of life stretched out before me. These e
Read more

Kintsugi and the Beauty in Broken Things

Image
'Hidden Damage'  Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering  There is a crack, a crack in everything  That's how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen Kintsugi ("golden joinery" or "golden repair") is the Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery with gold. It treats the breakage and repair of the item as part of its history, its journey, its existence. Rather than hiding the damage, it brightly illuminates the repair, inviting the world to see its improved beauty. Just like pottery, we humans can crack, splinter, break, shatter. These knocks remain part of our being and, whilst a brave face might create a temporary disguise, nobody can hide forever. At least I couldn't. To heal, I found I had to expose. Kintsugi treats the crack as merely an event in the life of the object, not a reason to end it. Kintsugi knows that something is more beautiful for having been broken. As someone who considers them
Read more