Beginning to Learn
I didn’t really get a full night’s sleep. More of a quick nap before meeting up with my ex to hang out when she gets off her graveyard shift. It went really well and we got along like we did when we were interested in each other. I have reservations as I’m not interested in pursuing her as a partner, but connecting with her has been great. Since we split, she’s quit drinking and gone to therapy. She has learned a lot about her behaviour and had a relatively volatile relationship she recently got out of so she’s a wealth of information and processing. That’s kind of how she is anyway though, being a ball of anxiety. It’s just nice now that it’s not a powder keg like when she was drinking and we can converse about deep feelings, share existential dread, and our lack of feeling like we belong in the world around us. Connecting with another person on this level is really great. And the other stuff we get up to is pretty great too.
After she left, I headed out for an early rehearsal. I laugh the hardest with my bandmates, easily and effortlessly. Some of the wittiest and empathetic people I know, and that goes for all my bands and bandmates. Connecting musically with others forms a crazy bond, like a wormhole of consciousness and these relationships are just inherently long-lasting and stable.
After rehearsal, I got back to my daily duties and stretched, exercised, and made my breakfast. Since I was feeling pretty good and energized after my 5 minutes of HIIT workout, I decided to jump up a level and try my hand at a 13 minute HIIT routine. Making it just barely halfway through, I had to stop. Jesus christ I’m out of shape. This was pretty sobering hitting some limits.
I felt really great with my morning but was exhausted because I only slept an hour+ so I laid down for a nap. Fast forward hours later and I’m getting up groggy. The joy feeling from the morning had faded considerably and guilt of sleeping during the day had kicked in. This usually begins to manifest into depression as I lay there still tired, not well rested due to severe sleep apnea, and contemplate going back to sleep, smoking a cigarette, or making some food. While I’m depressed, this will be full on decision paralysis which would stress me out and wake me up. Then anxiety and dread kicks in as I realize that I could be doing X or Y or Z task that I need to get done but I’m just laying on my back, fucking around on Reddit instead. Then back to guilt and depression which plops me back into my place and I lay there again. Next thing I know, five episodes of The Mindy Show have played and I’m way too invested in what these people are doing.
This whole cycle began for a moment, but then quickly began to subside as I was waking up a little quicker than usual. I sat and examined myself for a little bit and realized that it’s ok if I lay there for a little bit and relax. Maybe catch up on some show that I actually care about for an episode. In doing that I felt rested, got a chance to clear the work mucus off my brain, and got excited to do some cooking.
As my evening progressed, my ex that visited me this morning and I began texting quite a bit. Discussing a ton of things from interpersonal communication to shitty trauma we’ve lived through. In this process, I feel like I’m getting to recognize patterns and commonalities with relationships in the past and interactions with other humans in general. It’s a very fascinating experience and I’m looking forward to more and more of this. Learning about myself and knowing that there’s others in the world going through the same type of invasive, self deprecating thoughts that keeps me down are fought off by others. This gives me a bit of hope for making better decisions moving forward by understanding how I’ve mishandled things in the past.
Christ, what a kiddie roller coaster of a day.