Current State of Emotions
May, to be perfectly honest, was a shitshow.
I felt like I was encroaching on myself, and letting myself get the best of me. Self-sabotage is far easier than self-actualization--you know what you're doing while you're doing it, but you're almost unable to stop because somehow, it feels natural to snowball into full-on, level 100 Mess with a capital 'M'. The summer months were that for me: an easy ride into myopia, and ignoring the things my soul and my body were calling out for. I never believed those articles that say "stress will kill you"; it has always felt too simplistic, and I was always reading them from a superior POV--that I will always know when to tap on resources that will help me manage stress. I would know when to bail out. I just would.
As it turns out, when you're in the middle of it, in the midst of true, back-bending, almost soul-crushing stress that feels like shots of molten lava creeping up your nape, you don't see that you have options in order to feel less harried. You are just there, under the harsh office lights, digestion all dull and slow, and creativity at a stuttering standstill, wondering how you could survive the next day of feeling exactly just like this.
I knew I needed to snap out of it, but I just couldn't. There has just been too much pressure on my shoulders, and I almost enjoyed being so pressed for time, so unhealthily static, so focused on material catharsis, and so caught up in emotions that I would have processed better on a less stressful time. After a couple of years of radical self-love and finding ways to further become a better, more grounded version of me, it just felt like such a release to self-destruct. I was doing something forbidden, something that I couldn't speak about to other people because there is a delicate shame in reveling in it. It was an existential table flip, and I just wanted to lie back and do nothing as everything spilled over. It would be so easy, to eat mindlessly and just pack on more pounds, to compartmentalize tough emotions, to push away a new love, to do my work defensively, to never really be vulnerable enough again to create.
I imagine being hidden in swathes of clothes, in new folds of skin, my hair cropped to my skull, looking out at the world with vacant eyes.
I imagine disappearing.