Hey.

Stop for a second. Take a deep breath. Relax your shoulders, unclench your jaw. Breathe.

There.

I have an hour to just write. I don’t know if I need all of this time, but I’m going to play with some stream of consciousness stuff and see what happens.

A thing happened this morning.

Usually when I wake up in the morning I wake up in a state of obsessive rumination. Like my first moments of half-consciousness are saturated with anxiety spirals. I notice myself scrutinizing every memory and thought for things that are wrong with me, ways that I’ve fucked up, evidence that I am not lovable or loved.

The heaviest things to carry come from the inside. For me.

Once I’ve gotten out of bed and started to actually do things, it often gets better. But the thoughts follow me around, catch me at the least expected moments, when I’m least prepared to deal with them head on.

I often feel helpless.

I did not fully notice this pattern about waking up ruminating until a few days ago. I happened to stumble on a well articulated post in which someone was describing a similar experience, and something clicked.

The post was a reminder that even when it feels like we’re helpless, we’re often not.

When I woke up this morning, I remembered about the pattern. And I tried to remember that I am not completely helpless, even when it feels like I am.

I noticed the thoughts as they showed up.

They are almost all familiar and repetitive. I know them very well. I know what they’re going to say before they get a chance to land on me. I have this one advantage.

This morning, I didn’t fight them. I didn’t argue with them. That would’ve been too much work.

I just looked at them, and wrapped them up in a box, and wrapped a scarf around the box, and tied a string around the scarf, and tucked a flower under the string, and put the wrapped box in a drawer, and locked the drawer, and put the key in my pocket.

And I took a deep breath.

Not right now. I don’t need this right now. This is not helping me. These thoughts are only thoughts, that’s all the are. I don’t have to engage with this bullshit, now.

Noticing the pattern and having some idea of what was coming, combined with the reminder from some random post on the internet that I am not helpless, was useful to me.

Maybe some of these thoughts are worthy of my attention. I think there are some ways that I’m out of integrity with everything, and I think those are the things that deserve to be taken to heart and worked on.

But I think most of the anxiety spirals that come back to haunt me on a regular basis are actually just a stressed out nervous system… doing its best, but also getting things wrong, all the time.

What else should I expect?

What else should I expect from a body made of stardust, from an accident of physics, from something so improbable as consciousness and life in a universe like this one? Every time a body gets sick or dies, it’s a reminder that even though we’re impossibly beautiful and strong, we’re also finite and fragile and imperfectly designed. We can be both at the same time. And that’s okay.

So I don’t blame my nervous system for getting things wrong, for fixating on things that don’t matter. It’s a flaw, but we all have those. This is as good a time as any for compassion.

I think it’s important for me to understand that not ruminating first thing in the fucking morning isn’t negligence of anything important. It isn’t avoidance of something that I’m responsible for fixing.

It’s really just fucking okay to have boundaries and not engage with things when it doesn’t make sense to do so. And some of the most important boundaries exist inside the self.

This morning I woke up and thought of a handful of the best memories of a couple of my friends. I thought about a character from a TV show. I thought about an ethical dilemma from a book I’m reading for class and I let it bother me, I let it get well and truly under my skin, because it belongs there.

And then I got up and put on a t-shirt and jeans and put my hair up and out of my face and went downstairs for some coffee, and I said good morning to my dad. And the day unfolded from there.

This might have been one moment of strength among thousands of moments of not being able to fend off the bullshit. This might have been one good day, not the beginning of a good stretch. I don’t know what’s coming, and it scares me.

Right now I’m sitting that one down, for a while. And I’m going to go to class. My hour is almost up.

Thank you for seeing me, just seeing me, and for not running away.

Thank you.

I hope it’s a good Thursday.