Broken Habits.

When I originally started writing this it was about habits, because at the time it was something I felt held value for me and I’d been very good about keeping myself on schedule doing the things I needed to do. I would tidy up before I played games, go on a walk every day, make my bed in the morning, I ate healthy (healthier), and felt like I was putting myself on an upwards trajectory. I felt positive about myself and hopeful about my future for the first time in a long while. Of course I wouldn’t be writing about this if I’d managed to stay on course. 

Immediately after I wrote the first half of that post my mood dipped, and it coincided with the loss of my future roommate. Someone, who despite many opportunities, placed me in this heavily disagreeable situation forcing me into a place financially where I was uncertain if I’d even be able to afford to eat in the coming months, and it was questionable if I’d be able to afford rent on my apartment at all. I swung low, and on the topic of habits an old one kicked back in and I started ordering and buying food. My body image tanked, my self-esteem dropped, and most importantly I was over spending in a time when money was a point of major concern. I thought about killing myself alot, something I’d naively thought I’d moved past earlier in the year, I thought about intentionally getting Covid so I could try to get financial aid from the government or go stay in a hospital for a month or so. I wondered if it would be easier to shoot myself in the head or fall off the balcony. I wondered if I should leave a note, and what I should say in it. Also before you continue reading this isn’t that note, that note was burned by candlelight a few days ago. 

The point of writing this isn’t to garner sympathy or worry friends and family. I have a habit of closing myself off and I’m trying to be as open and honest with myself as I can be in writing this, this unfortunately means you also have to see exactly who I am, and you also get to be aware of how close I came to never posting this or anything else ever again. The point of this was habits, and my abysmal ability to hold onto them, or take action that positively affects my life in any meaningful way. I am in the habit of self-sabotage, and it’s something I’ve never quite been able to break. I attack myself with a viciousness I think anyone who knows me would be surprised by. I don’t allow myself to feel joy, I don’t allow myself to appreciate progress, I don’t allow myself to see past my flaws. I belittle myself constantly, and that in turn feeds an overwhelming sense of failure that’s made its home in my heart since I was a grade schooler. I have a drive in me to become great, but the thought of not living up to my expectations paralyzes me, it prevents me from acting at all. That fire in my heart is being smothered bit by bit, and despite its best efforts, I’ve almost extinguished it completely. At this point, that belief I will someday accomplish something is the only thing that’s kept me alive over the course of 2020, a year where I have been a genuine risk to my own wellbeing for more than 70% of the year. 

I’m interrupting here to talk a little bit more about suicide. I’d read something in the past little while that recontextualized suicidal thoughts and tendencies in my brain, and made me reconsider my own actions in the past few years. It spoke about how the suicidal brain isn’t something that necessarily craves death, it may not be active thoughts of killing yourself (which I also still have semi-regularly) but it’s the general choice to not put any effort into living. I don’t always want to shoot myself in the head, but I also have a genuinely hard time setting myself up to succeed in the future. I don’t see the value in taking care of my body because in my head I’ve already crossed out the option of having a future. I’m just here, I just exist minute to minute waiting to die. I have a hard time practicing because I can’t conceptualize a future in which I have the ability to use any of that time spent practicing. I don’t want to waste what I’ve already decided is a very finite amount of time on things that don’t immediately provide catharsis or satisfaction. I eat unhealthy, fatty foods because they taste better in the moment even though I know they’re worse for me in the long run. I overeat constantly because the thought of tomorrow’s consequences don’t hold value to me. I live minute to minute waiting to die. 

This is why I thought habits were so important to me. I thought if I could coach my body into doing things I didn’t find immediate satisfaction from, I could trick my brain into taking better care of myself, but as it turns out that doesn’t work. Habits fall apart now just as easily as they always have, because there’s an underlying principle I’ve continued to neglect. 

Discipline.

I always hated that word, it reminds me of the things I was forced to do as a kid because my parents had decided that it would be best for me. In all honesty it probably would have been good for any other kid (it certainly worked out fine for my sister) but I honestly don’t respond well to being forced to do things, and I never have. I always hated being told what to do. Unfortunately, my dad is very similar, which meant he never liked me implying I didn’t like the way he forced me to do things, which instilled a deep-seated resentment to the concept of discipline. I hate not being allowed to do things that alleviate some of the daily anger and sadness that wells up inside of me, even if it’s myself telling me no. I’m petulant and selfish, and in the long run, it’s almost gotten me killed at least once a year, and has probably shortened my lifespan by at least 20 years but I can’t keep pretending like things will work out if I just stubbornly refuse to die. One of these days my stubbornness will fall short and I’ll actually pull the trigger, and no matter how enticing that void appears on the other side, I can’t guarantee that passing to the other side of the veil will even grant me any sort of relief. If there’s a chance your conscious mind is frozen in death I would be existing in an eternity of torment. I don’t like to gamble, and the risks are too high for me to fully commit. There’s no guarantee death is a true escape, and there never will be, but it’s well documented how living might eventually bring happiness and joy. Provided I don’t eat myself to death first.

The real escape lies in the concept I continue to reject with every shredded fiber of my ego: Discipline. If I can somehow wrestle control of my life away from my id, I might be able to work my way to a point where I can find genuine joy and happiness. I’m going to hate it, and I’m going to fight against it tooth and nail, but like the story of two wolves, I need to feed that starving pup in my heart until it’s strong enough to fight off this black beast that’s been slowly tearing my soul to pieces. That process alone will be grueling enough, let alone the years-long effort to get my body and mind into any sort of healthy shape after that wolf is back in fighting shape. All I need is the willpower to be unhappy for a while, while I pursue the promise of happiness down the road, forgoing immediate relief for the promise of some sort of elusive long term solution to a madness that threatens to drown me in a cascading wave of voices. It’s taken me a long time to come to this but what I need to be in order to get healthy, both mentally and physically, is a willingness to suffer.

It’s strange how things click together all at once sometimes. Like a sudoku puzzle that you can spend hours agonizing over comes together all at once when you find one breakthrough number. My brain is like a massive sudoku full of numbers I neither understand nor recognize, but finally, at the very least I can see the patterns, and I can finally start making moves to solve that final puzzle. I feel that sense of bliss and calm that comes with understanding, all the sudden I know why I do the things I do, and I’m hoping now that I know I can stop them with better success. That’s the hope anyway, we’ll see if it’s true or not in the coming months/years. I’m crossing my fingers but I’m not holding my breath, I could only last 60 seconds with no air and I think I’ve grown a little tired of living minute to minute.