I wrote the following last night (between episodes of The Golden Girls), in one continuous flow of words, without (much) edit. I feel better for having written, as the words have been trapped inside my own head, and I knew that I couldn’t move forward with them weighing so heavy. I wasn’t so sure about posting this…but I mean for this place to be a chronicle of life, of living, and the frustration, unhappiness, and defeat of spirit I’ve been feeling is all part of it. I’ve also tried to think of a more elegant title, but after a quick visit to the thesaurus, it seems “Brain Dump” is the most apt way of putting what this is. A dumping out of some of the garbage that’s been festering inside my head. 

I have been eating myself sick and I feel stuck back in this particular rut after working so hard to get out of it last year. For all the work and time and effort I put into changing my habits, I’ve slid right back down to the bottom in what seems to be a blink of an eye. But then what is time anymore, really? I blinked and gained all the weight back, and yet Chloe left a hundred years ago, a lifetime ago, and Concord is but a distant memory. I’m exhausted from the mental accommodations I’ve been making, all the anxiety about what I can and can’t control. Teaching again, actually teaching, and having to manage others’ choices, impose my will on others. It’s all exhausting and my excuse is that I don’t have the mental strength by the end of the day, or weekend it seems, to withstand any sort of challenge to my willpower or discipline. I tell myself every morning, after having fallen asleep mildly sick to my stomach, that I will make healthier choices today, that this is the day that I turn things back around. I mean, how many times must I fail at making healthy choices before I finally learn that healthy choices make me a better person, a happier person. It is all positive. And what does it say that I can’t make those choices for myself? Mental exhaustion, surely. But what else? 

This fall devastated me in ways I was not prepared for. Perhaps I should have been preparing myself, mentally and emotionally, a bit better along the way. Then maybe the confluence of events around the start of the school year would not have leveled me like they did. Classic ostrich behavior. I like to think of myself as a peacock, or maybe an owl, cool fucking birds, when in fact, I’m more an ostrich. An ungainly, flightless creature whose defining characteristic is its avoidance of things. And running really fast. In my case, away from good things and responsible decisions.

I’ve been doing a lot of looking back. I used to be a much more vibrant, interesting person. I’ve faded a great deal over the past year or so. Professionally, I’m a shadow of what I was five, ten years ago. I’ve found old concert programs and I’m simultaneously proud of what I’ve accomplished and saddened at how washed up I feel now. I look at the folders I have here on Pages, and I remember how I was so on fire about rhyming and hip hop, and that made me really happy and excited for awhile. So did writing. And exercise. And cooking. And now…I feel dependent on media consumption. I am constantly streaming a show, or listening to a podcast, or filling the empty space in my life with the sounds and images of other people’s stories. I defend myself by saying that I’m always alone with my thoughts, and the constant drone of voices helps me lose myself somewhere else. I get so sick of my own voice inside my head that I want to drown it out. 

I feel a heaviness of spirit right now that I had gone some time without feeling. I really thought I had myself together enough this summer that I could withstand the struggles of my new job without giving up too much ground on my healthy habits. I badly underestimated how the school year was going to go. 

I am finding it difficult to be positive these days. When I think back to the ReBel posts from years ago, those times have a golden quality to them. A shininess, a glow of new possibilities and expanded horizons. Everything about my life now looks dull and small. Scuffed.

It is good to have things to look forward to. Next weekend, seeing Chloe. Thanksgiving. Everyone all together for Christmas. That’s about as far as I can look ahead.