ᯓ★1.28.25

for the last two days i've felt horrible. i feel like i'm at the mercy of my body, and i will be the first to admit i don't take care of myself as well as i should, but the demands of life versus the demands of my needs (physical, spiritual) clash. i should probably wake up at 6 a.m. to stretch every muscle, drink three glasses of water, and appreciate the sunset; i should probably be reading more than scrolling, should be eating more protein and less sugar, should be wearing shoes with arch support, should be taking a shower every other day instead of every two days. brushing my teeth twice a day and finding a new aching body part are my only consistencies (other than feeding my cats, who would certainly never let me forget to, anyway). i often daydream about all the things i could get done if i didn't have to work five days, forty hours a week. surely i would be taking care of myself, making use of that gym membership, learning how to cook. if i have consecutive days off, i spend at least a day recuperating before getting anything else done. if it's just one day, no matter how i spend it, it feels like a waste. the worst part is that i actually like my job most of the time. i remember when i hated my job--every single aspect of it would make my stomach turn with anxiety and i would cry before my shifts started just to get the emotion out of the way, and i was putting in half the amount of hours i do now. the best part is that i feel better than even two months ago about all of it. which sucks, since it's still kind of shitty. truthfully, i am thankful that it's only kind of shitty instead of purely shitty, and i completely feel for everybody that has a purely shit job that they have to get up for every single day and suffer through. 

not to mention the state of things! the US is in shambles, and i don't even know where to begin. i guess with capitalism, but that's just what i've been describing. all i have against it is the knowledge that i care more for the people around me--yeah, even the annoying ones--than the federal government ever will, and i've struggled for years not to think of that as a curse instead of a gift. have you ever sobbed not just because your own pain goes entirely unnoticed by anybody that can do something about it, but because you know some people have it so, so much worse at that very moment, and you can't do anything about it? if not, really let that sink in. you feel hopeless because your situation got even worse over night? just ask around. 

but you know, people keep going every single day--through homelessness, though eviction, through unemployment, through underpayment. if there's one thing that can reliably remain consistent, it's the tenacity of humankind--that, and inconsistency. myself and everyone around me goes through some of the worst, shittiest, scariest, most unpredictable stuff constantly. it piles up, compounds into one horrific, foul tasting knot in every one of my muscles and sits there until now, or at least the last two days, when it all resurfaces as exhaustion, anxiety, and burnout. then, i'll half ass everything for about a month--and i mean everything, scarily enough--before i get one massive burst of energy wherein i read three books, clean my whole apartment, and get ten hours of sleep a night per week. then that cycle just keeps on going. it is tiring in and of itself, but i allow myself to be imperfect as a treat, and i tweak my coping mechanisms as i learn from them. i should be doing some things and should not be doing other things, i lack self discipline, and i forget to follow certain social cues or purposefully ignore them when there's enough plausible deniability. i think it's healthy to be messy, and it's kind of fun. 

i haven't spent much time talking about all the good amongst the bad because honestly there's only little bits of it amongst all the horrors, but when it's good, it is so good. there is so much whimsy around us; even in the dingiest corners of a concrete jungle, flowers sprout between the cracks, and even in the lifeless expanse of a desert, stars blaze in the darkness. so, i guess it's always worth it, even if my back hurts.