a fleeting sense of control

I apologize in advance for the crudeness

I wrote this post a week or so ago, and felt so good about what I put down. Life had other plans - which you’ll see in the comic that follows. Enjoy watching me being served some delicious humble pie.

~This is probably a slightly premature declaration - but I feel like something in me has shifted since I turned 25 a couple of months ago. Or perhaps a better way to say it is, settled. They say that thing about how your brain isn't fully matured until you turn 25. Is that what happened for me?

I was led to this slightly grandiose thought by a sense of (slight) control that I’ve felt lately, over my own life. You might also give credit to the twice-a-month therapy sessions I force myself to wake up at 6:30 am in the morning for, or to an epiphany I had while running, or wisdom from certain new wiser influences in my life - I really couldn't pin point it. But things don’t feel so unpredictable and chaotic lately.

Actually, they do - but I feel like I have a clearer sense of why they do, when they do. When life hits me with a shitstorm - I still do become temporarily blinded. But earlier, when things used to fall down at me, I used to become paralyzed and get too caught up in despair that this was even happening. Now - I see the shitstorm, I acknowledge how it feels in my body, and I understand why I’m reacting the way that I am. Because I am aware of it, I can tell my body to unclench. I am able to make these connections between the situation and how shitty I feel, and forgive myself for it, while also visualizing the things I can do to rectify it once the crushing dread has passed - all things I did not even have the vocabulary to verbalize how I am right now.

All this, of course, remains to be tested by a shitstorm of truly massive proportions, and it is bold of me to send these words out into the universe before it has. But I want to savor this moment - of feeling like I can.

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Spoiler alert : previously mentioned shitstorm did hit me soon after. Here’s the comic.

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Book I’m reading : A Very Nice Girl, by Imogen Crimp

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/13/books/review/a-very-nice-girl-imogen-crimp.html

You know when you consume content that feels a little too close to home? People around you seem to enjoy it, but to you it just feels like a mean-spirited parody of your own life. Girls felt like that, and Frances Ha - they’re great but they’re also unbearable because seeing other people watch feels like they’re actually watching you - you end up feeling like a zoo animal. Even though the depiction might be flattering, it always makes you shiver with disgust and slight self-loathing. This book feels a little like that. I’m reading it more as a cautionary tale at this point. Let’s see if I can get through it.

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That’s all for today, thanks for navigating this slightly tumultuous newsletter with me~ more soon. Please keep me in your thoughts as I find a new coping mechanism, or make one of these shitty ones work:)