A Recovering Cynic's Can of Worms

 8:01pm, 

Trigger Warning: 
This blog post touches on anxiety. If you are someone who is triggered by narratives primarily focusing on depressive episodes and anxiety, please click out now. This post is meant to be insightful, but it may not be the most comfortable read. 

Currently Playing: Two People, Gracie Abrahms / Unsteady, Gracie Abrahms

Hello there :)

If this is your first visit to the blog; Welcome! Take a seat! Grab a blanket, a cup of tea and this hand I am more than willing to offer. If you've been here before; Welcome back! Your seat is still open, your blankets at the back, and there's a new stash of tea leaves left out for you to try. This hand, as you know, is still yours to hold. 

I haven't written one of these in a while. 'One of these', I suppose, is a rather broad phrase; I haven't rambled on here, is what I mean to say. Haven't spilled my guts out to anyone in a while, haven't felt the need to set down my can-of-worms heart in anyone's hands in a while. Tonight, however, it is open and boy, do the worms have something for everyone. 

Squishy earth friends aside, this is my safe space, and by association, now yours too. If you're unfamiliar with how this goes, fret not; it requires very little from your end. All you really have to do is read, which if you're here, you've done well so far. Go on, give yourself a pat on the back. 

The other, more exhausting thing you have to do is Understand. That's the catch, really. You're supposed to put your judgements aside, put your moral compass down for a moment, and sit with me, in this space, as I hurl a heady stream of thoughts and beliefs onto the floor between us. 

Okay, that's enough dilly-dallying on my end, I think. You have people to be and places to see, after all. 

Today I woke up and didn't want to die. Let's start there. Today I woke up, and I made myself a tall glass of semi-sweet iced coffee, sat in front of a screen, logged into a meeting. Today I woke up, and existed. 

And it didn't feel monumental. Didn't, hasn't felt like a victory. Doesn't make me proud. 

So what do I make of it? Is it progress, if I don't necessarily find it joy-inspiring? Is it a fluke, because it's just one day, and it won't overwrite how I've become so accustomed to waking up hoping I wouldn't? 

What do you call it when existing becomes voluntary? 

I don't quite know, and I don't expect you to either. Safe space, remember? No judgements. Not for now, at least. 

As of late, I wake up and think myself into being. I imagine myself refreshed, guide my body to sit still and feel the air moving in and out of it, give myself the quiet moments in between minutes to be. I think about everything I do, twice, before I do it. Then I think about it some more, after its done. I live so deeply in the chambers of my head that I can't quite tell you what I think of. Lately, being has become mechanical. I'm here, but I don't quite feel like I am, and no amount of thinking will ever resolve that for me. 

This is not new, of course. It isn't something that happened overnight. It isn't something that happened because I lost my brother, or because I did terribly on that one exam everyone hoped I'd ace, or because my father is the opposite of awake, or because my mother is the sun, or because my brother and I are often just two children trying to enjoy the small, certain happinesses our childhoods did not offer. It feels like I've always been this way; introspective to a fault, terribly rooted to thoughts, forgetful in the wake of everything but the ramblings of my overactive brain. 

Like I'm constantly thinking and thinking and thinking because it's the only way I know to live. 

I can theorize why I do it and I can prove why it isn't healthy. But I can't seem to stop, not even when it leads to cliffs over truths I should probably never have discovered. Not even when I'm in the kitchen actively turning my head away from the knife holder because God what if I think myself dead?

This, of course, should make me a volatile person. Should make me a flight-risk, the kind that must be kept under surveillance because God forbid she'll hang herself if she's given a minute to think about it. But I'm not, because being a Thinker means I'm also rational to a fault. I have thought about every scenario twice as much as most people, because it gives me a semblance of control, reminds me that I am still very much the only person who knows what I think about and how far the thoughts stray. 

I don't advocate. I don't care for what others choose to do with themselves, or the paths they take, because I am a fervent believer in autonomy. In free will. In the fact that our choices lead us places, not our circumstances. This way, when things go wrong, we each take a part of the blame. Suum Cuique, if you will. To each his own. Some younger version of me will not hesitate to scoff and tell you this is classic Plato-fanatic talk or, even Aviccenism in play, but that's a dragon best left undisturbed.

Where am I going with this?

Frankly, I don't know. The thing about thinking is that it's not adjacent to knowing. It's not like I know what will happen; I rely on cognitive patterns and predictions. And if my predictions are right, this blog post will end with Wise Words about Being, and be received one of two ways; a) a steady stream of sentiments on how Relatable it is, or b) Crickets, absolute Crickets. Either way, I'm still writing this, and it will still be up for as long as this blog is up, because while I value my privacy, I also revel in my ability to be vulnerable. 

Back to what I was saying, about waking up and Not wanting to die, because I don't have all night and you'll appreciate minimal tangents (although, if you know me, you know there's no such thing as a steady conversation; my words are as much a scatter as my thoughts). 

These mornings are the result of the nights that come before. Of nights when I lay awake with the incessant whir of thoughts. Of nights when I think of sheep in slaughterhouses and men I've outlived and secrets I should dispose and girls I don't remember knowing and poems I shouldn't have written and songs my bones quiver to. 

These nights are notorious for their ability to drive me to decisions I can't quite undo the next morning. But I'm always blissfully aware that those are my choices, even if they feel inevitable, that I'm choosing to stay rooted to my distasteful thoughts and their disastrous consequences. Because I am painfully self-aware, and disgustingly ready to bear all the blame for who I am. So I suppress, every thought a second heartbeat, every confession a gulp of spittle. Because to be, I have to accept whatever I already am. Even the tainted parts. Especially the tainted parts. 

Often, I think about how everything has the potential to be self-harm if it distracts you from 'being' for long enough. Everything. Yes, everything. Staying up because sleeping feels like a reward I don't deserve is self-harm. Re-reading conversations because reading them makes me miss who we once were is self-harm. Looking at everything I've done and dismissing all of it is self-harm. Obsessing over fiction, over celebrities, over media. It's me looking at myself and refusing to see what's wrong in plain sight. It's seeing what's wrong and choosing to look away. 

I'm not here to claim I know what would help. Safe space, remember? I don't have answers. I only have these thoughts, and predictions, and very, very unhealthy coping mechanism, but hey, I'm coping. Cut me some slack, because I can't bring myself to forgive myself for everything I've ever been. 

I know part of this is religious guilt, that my existence feels sacrilegious when prayer is all the believing I can do most days, when I am stuck in tandem between thoughts of a merciful Deity whose wrath rattles my bones. Because in my inability to relax is a deep-rooted desire to be Perfect. The perfect muslim, who I am far from, is a caricature that taunts me in the dark; She is firm, she is quiet, she doesn't drive herself in circles over things she can't control, she doesn't miss people who don't miss her, she knows the right supplication for every instance. 

And I know it's pitiful, to be driven to a corner by something I can never be. To slip on a mirage. To chase what doesn't exist. It's pitiful but most truths are. And the sooner I come to terms with it, the easier this weight will be to bear. 

Ah, too many worms. Look, you don't have to touch them. Just let them be. They'll come back, eventually, but it's nice to not hold on to them for once. It's all okay. My tin-can heart needs to rattle in my chest before its full again.  

My friends are worried, so maybe this is my way of telling them what I told them I don't have the words to tell them when they asked. It's nice, to pretend they're reading this, to know they care, to hope they understand. I told a friend, Zeenath, last week, that I'm a little in love with everyone I know. I didn't tell her that it's a wounding kind of love, and I don't notice how much it hurts until the bruises bloom, and even then, I can only watch them come and go as they must. Because I chose to love them, and I chose to bear the weight of it. 

Tonight, I will get into bed and watch an episode of a reality show just because I can, and I will drift off to sleep with predictions for a future I have no control over. Tomorrow, I will wake up, and maybe I will want to die, but I will brush my teeth and spit my heart out, and drink my semi-sweet iced coffee and log into another meeting. Maybe I will not want to die, and I will douse myself in the perfume my ex-coworker-turned-friend gave me when we last met, and I will answer emails instead of deleting them. 

I suppose, what I mean to say is, I will not rot. I will not let myself rot, because rotting is easier and I'd rather eat a brick than take the easy way out. I will not let the worms in my tin can heart spill out into my blood. Because my comfort zones are only comfortable for so long. Because Gracie Abrahms has all the words I've been looking for, and who knows what else she has in store. Because my best friend hasn't seen my texts from this morning and I want to be here when she does. Because I haven't written my best book yet. Because I haven't met the best me yet.

No life lessons here, not really. Just some slimy worms, a garble of words from the depths of my heart, and a coarse hand to hold while we take the roads least taken. 

This is in no way comprehensive, nor is it in anyway a place to diagnose yourself, or me. For what its worth, I'm only being human. You should try it sometimes, it's rather freeing to forget who you are and to just let yourself be.  (Does this mean I am A-okay? no, the anxiety of having written this will override the calm and I will be tempted to throw myself off the plane of existence every few days, but hey, I'm trying. That should count, right?)

To more tea, life-defining semi-sweet iced coffee and every worm our hearts host, 

N x. 

P.s. I can't promise I'll do this often. Also can't promise I know what I'm doing. Definitely can not promise where we're headed. But, I can predict. And it looks like a place with a nice view, flowing rivers and gentle shoulders to lean on.