stuckness
help, step-bro, i'm stuck in an existential loop of my own making
you know that famous fig tree quote by sylvia plath that everyone likes to use to describe the debilitating and crippling nature of choice? yeah, that one. that quote has lived in the recesses of my already atrophying 27-year-old brain since i first read it.
while i was having breakfast with my family today, i was suddenly compelled to blurt out, “today, life doesn’t feel full of possibility.” it’s springtime—aries season! i’m supposed to be naively hopeful (think the Fool card in a tarot deck). and yet today life truly does NOT feel full of possibility. it only feels like an endless amount of dead ends. of roads that ultimately lead to nowhere. i pick one path and find myself in a bleak environment, backtrack to choose an alternative path, only to find the same bleak environment in a different font.
maybe i’m wrong and life really is full of endless possibilities. but therein lies exactly the problem. i see myself in every iteration of the multiverse and i can’t pick just one to settle into, to content myself with. and so i am stuck, looking up at the branches of the fig tree, cursing and shaking my fist at all of the possibilities that i cannot have because i cannot choose.
what do i do to get unstuck? i don’t know that i am really all that deliberative in the ways that i get myself out of this loop. the key is that i just do. anything. any small, little, thing that feels like an accomplishment to me. anything that allows me to exercise what little agency i feel i possess.
i create. i draw a stupid little doodle. i start a new knitting/crochet project (ignoring the 5+ other wips i already have). i write a sad little poem.
i make myself a snack. lately my obsession has been this really simple arugula salad with chopped cherry tomatoes and an olive oil, red wine vinegar, balsamic glaze dressing. but a healthy bag of salt ‘n vin kettle chips also does the trick.
i move my body. i dance—i contort my limbs to the sounds of lil jon screaming “OKAYYY!!!” whatever feels right, even if it doesn’t look right. and most of the time it doesn’t look right, but i don’t care. only i get to be witness, and it fills me with glee to shake my ass with reckless abandon.
cold fucking showers. actually a shower in general but lately, i’ve discovered that torturing my body with the coldest water my faucet produces does something amazing for my mood. in the moment it is the most excruciating, animalistic experience but once i get out i feel like i’ve snorted cocaine. give it a try.
i take drugs: magnesium glycinate, some l-theanine, burdock root—vitamins, minerals, and all that bullshit. i may constantly be questioning the purpose of my existence, but that does not mean i won’t do everything i can to ensure this vessel of mine is healthy, hot, and happy(ish).
these are small things, negligible to the eyes of some, but when i feel like i can’t do anything or be anything that i’m supposed to, they really do the trick.
shake your ass for me today, okay? ideally to this song, but truly, with the right mindset, you can drop it down low to any song you please.
byeeeeeee
-ac