Journaling is a wonderful thing. It is like the written form of a picture of a moment. Something that we capture and share or keep it to ourselves.
I have been up to a few things lately, so let’s just sit down, shut the world for a while and have a read (grab a coffee if you fancy as well).
To recap it all, in all traditional chronological manner, we have to leap back in time to May 2019. My lovely Instagram feed and stories might suggest that the happiness is bursting out of my chest and I am having unlimited fun, all the time. Indeed, I had a lot of good times this summer, saw several gigs and festivals, but we have to get out of the dark to see the light in the end.
Even though some things might look as dreamy and beautiful as anything in life could possibly be, it might not be the complete thruth. Sometimes, life is like a matcha latte: astoninshly beautiful from the outside, the first sip tastes horrible, but instead of putting something that feels toxic away, we intake it until we get used to it.
For my part, I have developed excellent skills over the years of intaking toxins, instead of keeping it away from me, as I simply did not have enough self-respect, I thought I was not worth it.
One day, when the days started to get warmer, the pints started to double, and everyone was having their dinners al fresco, I felt that heaviness in my chest again. I felt tired, unconditionally. The knot was back. I woke up shaking. Welcome back, anxiety. My forever unrequired friend.
Not much later, I find my chaotic self again, hiding from my mind’s darkness, in a therapists office, pouring my heart out.
That felt like the right way of coping with it. Man, therapists have the potential to get rich out of this mind, I kept thinking.
Welcome back to rock bottom, here we go again.
Even though I feel miserable inside, every phase of mine refuses to admit it. My therapist is trying very hard to explain me that I have to take care of myself in order to leave hell again, but my mind acts like a stubborn toddler at its best and simply refuses to believe that self-care is the key to feeling good again. I wake up shaking, feel empty inside, take everything to fill that void, nothing works so I starve or overeat myself. My life is determined by unhealthy extremes, and there seems to be no way out. Heaven knows I am miserable now is on constant repeat, and as I get used to my suffering lifestyle, my mind is very set on not believing any doctor’s voice in the world that the activity of “self-care” is a necessity.
At that point, feeling stressed and burnt out my own unrealistic and toxic standards, it simply won’t go into my head that switching off will bring me further than overworking will ever do.
I officially declare myself as non-healable but knew at the same time that my mind as well as my body will stop functioning one day if I continue like that. I can’t understand myself. Looking back, I could have if I tried. But I did not even try.
One day, magically, due to a friend’s recommendation, I find Dolly Alderton’s book in a lonely WHSmith at a train station. The last one of its kind. I bought the book, and that is the point ladies and gentlemen, when I found my way back to one of my passions: reading and writing.
Like magic, once I started reading, I actually felt like I practise “self-care”- a term a refused to add to my vocabulary only a few weeks before.
As cheesy as it might sound, I started feeling better, and for some reason had the courage to delete everything toxic out of my life.
During the next summer months, fulfilled of warm wind seeking change, I slowly fell back in love with reading and writing. My self-diagnosed writer’s block started to make a permanent disappearance and I felt like I could use this platform again, without having the doubts of life before pressing the big, blue publishing button.
I realized that my creativity works very simple, what I perceive will be the inspiration to an outcome. If I don’t read, there won’t be any good written outcome.
Also, I realized how much I suffered from my own stress and intoxicating manners. I am fully aware of the fact that I am a born warrior, I simply need to learn how to handle it, not how to avoid it.
I decided to publish the truth, as I feel sick of all those perfectly written and visualised stories about summer. Of course, nobody of us wants to show how weak we can be, but if nobody even starts, nothing will ever change. I want to let anyone out there in this big wide world know, that you are not going alone through this.
If you hit rock bottom, don’t be afraid to speak up or seek help. Please do it before the rock rolls over you completely.
Even if your inside world is shaking like a never-ending earthquake, you lost sight of the light ages ago and you have to clue how to ever get out of this, please remind yourself that you are not alone. We are all going through this together and that makes it less daunting.
What kept me going, was not super healthy influencer approved smoothies or a weekly trip to the gym, it was the fact that a change is coming. The change has happened now, and for the first time in a million years, I feel balanced. By balanced I mean I haven’t had a massive down in two weeks, and I feel capable of handling stress without burning out.
The change was to move across the world. Changing countries. Again. Seems like a hobby of mine. With the difference that it is only temporarily this time.
For doing a term abroad, I moved to Toronto, Canada. I moved here roughly about a month ago. It is very lovely and the start of an amazing new chapter after I closed summer with going to a music festival in Budapest.
What I can say now, is that Canada is extremely different from my beloved Europe, but it is extremely interesting and challenging to live at the other side of the world.
Country number three, here we go again.
As I don’t feel capable or wise enough to write anything valuable about living in this strange new environment, I will postpone it to my next journal entry.
All I can say is that I am extremely overwhelmed by this new world outside of me, and I am constantly adapting.
At the end, I never thought that having a bath, reading a good book and listening to Aretha Franklin could make me the possibly happiest person in the world, but it really does.
Do things that scare you. There is a world outside there waiting to be explored by you.
Have the courage to say yes. But most importantly, take care of yourself, it is so important.
Nina x