No Bruises Here
something lighthearted for a change
Once, somebody wrote that to be creative is to find the darkest, freshest bruise and press on it with your thumb. Turn the ache into art. Exploit your own pain so you have something to show for it. It’s advice I swear by.
—Except for this month, during which I spent my showers looking for bruises and coming back empty. Some reasons why this might be the case:
I’m settling into the
mundanitystability of post-convocation life, steady employment and all. It’s funny: I was so convinced that graduating from university would be the definitive end to the best days of my life and that there’d be nothing worth sticking around for afterwards, but man… making income is pretty sweet. Is this what giving into capitalism feels like?I’ve started exercising regularly and I am half-convinced I’m going to pass away every time I do. It’s great. It feels like I’m doing the multi-stage fitness test three times a week. And as much as I hate to admit it, they’re not kidding when they say exercise does wonders for your mental health
(I’m actually mad about the efficacy of exercise for improving your mood. Out of all the lifestyle changes to work, it had to be this? This and a regular sleep schedule? Really?)
Very recently, I’ve stopped overdoing the mind-altering substances! I’ve tried to commit to moderation multiple times over the past few years but I feel like this might be it: the real deal, where I stop getting messy drunk or being catastrophically high on edibles. In the past, I’ve caved at parties hoping that being drunk will feel the same as it did when I was nineteen, but I’m starting to come to terms with how I just don’t have the liver I used to. Nineteen-year-old Anna was a tank who took 8+ tequila shots and then woke up completely fine. Present Anna takes one shot and then wants to throw up for the rest of the night.
My psychiatrist might call my current state “being at baseline,” but that’s such a clinical way to describe it. Maybe this is just what contentment is: not having to cater to the whimsy of the roiling emotion swamp within you. I’m so used to life feeling like high highs and low lows; lying on the floor for weeks only to later frenetically love being alive. But this is a softer resting spot than a low and less sparkly than a high.
I wake up to sunlight. I smell the colossal lilac bush that’s blooming in the backyard. I read Mary Oliver poems and eat enough vegetables. Nothing is terribly wrong or terribly right—it just is and I’m just a part of it. You’re a part of it too.
love,
anna
“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.’”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.