A QUARTER-LIFE CRISIS, MAYBE?
When I lived in Mexico I vividly remember this one time I was so fucking high that my body was numb, right down to the tips of my fingers and toes and it was only 11am. So I found myself staring at the ceiling fan for a solid four-plus hours without even flinching. After awhile I decided to draw a smiley face onto a lined piece of paper from my journal and cellotape it to one of the fan arms for entertainment. It worked. I laid there giggling like a little girl as the smiley face spun round and round and slowly changed it’s expression due to the aggressive movement of the fan. At that moment I remember thinking to myself that I’m experiencing a memory that will push through any future ambiguity.
So here we are. Shit hit the fan and I’m just admiring that fucking smiley face spinning round and round over and over, and throughout this experience I’m numb. Is that a positive thing? I’m unsure, yet I do know that it’s not the end of the world because in that moment in Mexico I seriously thought I was dying, and hey, I didn’t die. Therefore, I’m certainly not dying this time round either.
Back to the current story
Around July last year I quickly realised I was in a really dangerous place. I was experiencing all levels of stress causing my body to malfunction on me. No exaggeration of the truth, I was even loosing my hair. I lost friends, family and myself in the process of assuming it’d miraculously get better without me making change.
Now I’ve talked about this a lot on here, I’m aware. Life can be full of joy as much it can be trivial and as of late the universe has really enjoyed kicking the soccer ball at my face and hey, that’s allgood I’m here for it, but damn I don’t always have the capacity to dodge that stupid fucking soccer ball!
So to get to the point… I quit my amazing job at the tech start-up. I went back into my business full-time because it was losing money at such a rapid rate that I didn’t really have another option other than to work myself and save on wages. I moved out of my beautiful house on millionaire mile and into the storage room of my sister’s place and the icing on the cake, I sold most of my cool shit and cut right back to living a way that truly reflected my current status quo… aka, the smell of an oily rag.
I know this doesn’t have to define my success, but it was a slap in the face. How could it not be? One minute you have everything (atleast you think you do), the next you’re almost royally fucked in the tight little space that is my asshole. Don’t worry, this story does get better, yet no story get’s better without a lightbulb moment. So here comes the switch.
Throughout this process I became extremely humbled. I had to start asking for help. I had to start saying no. I had to accept that by pulling back from all my friends and social endeavours meant loosing my name on the block, which for an extrovert like me really sucked (first world problems). I had to become much less to learn more and move past my roadblocks. Which I have done, thankfully. Not without the cost of compromise and challenge, a big cost at that!
My business slowly started making money again. My relationship with myself and my body started to heal and now I can say the fog has lifted just enough for me to have a slim amount of clarity. I now understand that all of this needed to happen so I could shift my focus toward what really mattered in my life, to enable the best version of me. I thought I knew who I was, but I didn’t. I was being everything but the person I wanted to be, telling myself it was okay because I was everything everyone else wanted me to be. Fuck I’m like a broken record, it’s exhausting. I thought I’d worked through my need to be liked by others, be a ‘somebody’, but I hadn’t and now I think I ACTUALLY… FINALLY… HAVE? Yet it doesn’t look anything like what I thought it would. So now I sit in the process of accepting that. Looking at what is, opposed to what ‘could’ve, should’ve’ been.