It definitely hasn’t been a perfect week.

I can’t put my finger on a the trigger yet, but I’m sure a revelation is on the horizon.

I put off writing most of this week because I couldn’t manage to sit down and dive into what was going in. I feel okay, fine even. Nothing’s particularly wrong yet nothing feels right.

The earliest I left my bed this week was close to 1pm while bedtime has fallen to around three in the morning. I’ve felt more exhausted lately when I don’t feel like I have a reason to. I let myself get plenty of sleep most nights, but I overdo it. I lay there for 10+ hours because I can. 

The days I have nowhere to be, I completely sleep away. It starts your day off already feeling like you missed out on everything. I know I haven’t, but a feeling of shame still follows. Sometimes it feels good to lay around and do nothing, but when I let myself get in a daily habit of it, I lose all motivation to do anything.

I managed to still get errands done this week and do most of what I set out to do, but I felt pretty numb doing it. I just want to zone out and not exist for a bit.

 

I get caught up in my thoughts more often than not nowadays.

 

I let a bad moment or feeling take over and bring me down with it. 

I try to put the things I preach in to practice, but sometimes I can’t bring myself to do it. It all feels inauthentic.

I haven’t journaled much this week, so this is really the first time I’m dissecting this mood aloud.

Right now, it seems like a feeling of being stuck.

I craved all of this time alone months ago and the ability to just take time to myself.

I look back to my two-job days and that was a level of exhaustion I didn’t know I could experience. I don’t know how I pulled through the lifestyle for nearly two years. Even when the pandemic hit, I still worked. I was jealous of those around me with time off and I prayed for days where I’d get the same chance.

So now, even having the chance for a few days alone feels like a miracle. I sleep again. I read and write again. I should feel good.

Having a bad week now feels like it shouldn’t happen. I got what I wanted in the end and yet, I still find ways to feel unhappy. I know life isn’t picture perfect all the time, but damn, I wish I could just bask in it for longer periods of time. My up times never seem to outlive the downs.

I figure just going through with plans anyway will bring me out of the rut. It works sometimes. 

I get the ball rolling and I feel better than I did hours prior.

It hasn’t been one of those weeks.

I don’t feel sad necessarily but I can’t seem to find the silver lining yet. It sucks ending time off feeling like your mind never got a chance to rest. 

 

I’ve found myself using avoidance a lot this week.

 

I haven’t responded to texts or messages as much. When I do, I feel guilty for going ghost. It feels worse when you’ve done it in the past and it feels like all you ever do is apologize for your absence. It’s just hard to keep conversations going when you truly are going through it. You don’t want to burden other people with your problems especially when you don’t fully understand them yourself.

I found myself getting really sad over grief this week. It came in spurts, but remained nonetheless. 

I got myself in an internet hole over Mac Miller last night and his death gets to me ’til this day. 

It’s strange too. I had been a fan of his since high school, but in the year of his death I was more invested in him than I had been in a long time. Maybe the headlines had him more on my radar, but I still vividly remember the night I found out he passed.

I was working a dinner shift at my hotel job. I was walking to the bathroom and as I was walking down the hall, pulled out my phone. The Twitter headline didn’t feel real. It felt like a punch in the gut and the feeling of shock lasted for weeks. He was only twenty-six and reaching such a pivotal part of his career.

Losing him to overdose weighed even heavier because my childhood best friend had passed months earlier from a heroine overdose. A month later, my cat of fifteen years died. 

2018 held so much loss that I truly never experienced before. I lost my grandma when I was younger, but being 22, I had a lot more understanding of death than I did as a kid. 

 

Grief was something I didn’t know how to process. 

 

I’ve listened to Mac’s music consistently since he passed, but reading all of those articles from when he passed last night just brought me back to that sad place. The fact Mac’s music is around me constantly kind of desensitized me to the fact he died. It felt like he never did since his voice was still a constant in my life. Even with Circles dropping last year, it felt like his catalogue wasn’t ending. 

Being reminded of his death like that only showed me that while his legacy lives on, things will come to an end for his career. It doesn’t feel fair. I don’t know if his family ever plans on dropping more unreleased tracks, but thing is, they have to grieve too. It must’ve been painful as hell to drop Circles last year knowing Mac wasn’t around to see it. 

Then when I think about my childhood best friend, I realize she’s frozen in time as well. She’ll never be any older than 21 in this lifetime. All I have left are the memories. While I see things that remind me of her all the time, she’s the only other person who would understand what those things mean. 

I fell into a YouTube hole earlier this week (clearly I have pattern when I’m feeling down) and I stumbled across all those viral videos from the late 2000’s. Charlie the Unicorn, Llamas with Hats, even random Weird Al music videos. All the shit we used to laugh at when we were 12. 

She’s always the person I’ll associate with those videos and while others have seen them, she’s the person I experienced them with. 

Being in a down place already, going through the Mac articles and childhood videos didn’t help my state. It gets you thinking why we’re all still here and they’re not. 

You think about all of the things you’ve seen since their deaths that they never got to experience. I think about if Megan never overdosed and beat her addiction, how our friendship could’ve rekindled. I think about all of the projects that Mac hadn’t even thought of yet.

 

I know getting sad over these things does nothing to bring them back, but you can’t help it some times. 

 

I even think about my cat and how much she would’ve helped me through some of my worst times in the past two years. She was an angel and I still can’t believe she’s gone. I was about to keep going on about her, but I already feel emotional after a sentence so we’re going to coast past that. All I know is that I miss her deeply and hope she knows how loved and missed she is.

Honestly I think we have to let ourselves get sad sometimes. It feels shitty right now, but I know this feeling isn’t forever.

Whenever I get like this, I see I have the tendency to get nostalgic. It comes out in different ways. Either I look back on my own personal life or, if that’s what we’re avoiding, I’ll end up down internet rabbit holes like we’ve seen.

It feels like a search to get out of where I am right now. 

It’s weird when you don’t know what you’re avoiding. I know I must be trying to escape something but the realization hasn’t come to fruition yet. I think this is the beauty of sticking to writing weekly. I never know what headspace I’m going to be in when I finally sit down to write. 

I’ll try to wait for the perfect moment or mood, but on a week like this, that moment never comes. You just find yourself accepting you have to do it anyway. I could’ve easily taken a week off, but I don’t want this page to be a perfect feed. Life isn’t great all of the time. You don’t even need an explanation for why. Sometimes you just get knocked on your ass and have to continue on. 

Hiding the weeks like this do myself a disservice, but also this space. 

 

We all go through things in our lives that bring us down. It’s an inevitable part of being alive.

 

I’d rather be candid than pretend these times don’t happen.

I could be writing next week and everything feels fine then, but for now, we’re here. 

I knew sitting down to do this would help in some way. Even if I feel like I said a whole lot of nothing, I know my words won’t read the same to everyone. We’re our own biggest critics, especially on weeks like this.

It’s easy to forget all we’ve accomplished already when we get way too caught up in our current problems. It feels like we’ve never been here before or felt this low in the past, when really we’ve all had a bad day before this one.

The days that were our worst can be outdone just as the good days can too. 

While our problems might feel worse or unique now, we’ve experienced these similar feelings before. 

The thing we forget is after those feelings, positive things did happen again after. We didn’t stay in that place forever.

There is more to life than our darkest moments. 

I feel like crap currently but life goes on as it always does. 

I never know what’s right around the corner nor do you. It’s impossible to predict how our lives unfold. We can have an idea for them, but we never truly know what’s going to happen.

 

It makes me sad for those we lost due to depression or addiction. 

 

Life can be a beautiful thing but it can also convince you deeply that there’s nothing more to live for. You become tired of the same old things or don’t see how things can get better. You cope, cope, cope. You try, try, try. Nothing helps and that lingering feeling of wanting to be out of your body or mind takes over. 

I’ve been there more times than I can count and it makes me sad so many have been lost for the very same feelings.

On the other hand, losing those I cared about makes me want to try harder for them – to live on in their memory. 

Even long after his passing, Mac has lived on in so many lives on this planet. He lives on in mine. That’s not something that disappears because he’s gone. If anything, his passing has made me appreciate artists a lot more than I used to. You never know when someone’s time comes and when they’ll release their final project. It makes you want to appreciate everything your favorite artists ever deliver. 

With Megan, I try to focus more on what we had than what could’ve been. I can’t change that we don’t have our adulthoods together, but she shaped my entire childhood. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without her. I know she wouldn’t believe that if she were alive today, but it’s true. I’m trying to look back on those things we shared with a grateful heart more than resentment. Just because I’m the only one alive with our shared memories doesn’t mean she doesn’t live on in them.

 

It’s hard to come to terms with the hurt in the world when you’re hurting too. It feels like a never-ending cycle of pain at times. It’s difficult to see the good in the bad when you can’t let go of the bad. 

 

After this week, I’m trying to find the good again though. 

I’m still here. I’m still breathing. I have plenty of people around me for support even when I feel like I’m alone in the thoughts. 

Isolation and sad times happen, but we have to remind ourselves of the other side. There’s always going to be another side to the things that break you down.

So, I’m trying to enter this week with a lighter heart.

 

One of the best things I’ve learned over the years is to not climb mountains when you’re trapped in a mole hole.

 

Sometimes we wake up and there’s an entire day in front of us we don’t have the energy for. 

There’s so much to conquer and get done when that’s the last thing we want to do. 

Instead of stressing about the entire day, you work in five minute increments of what would make you feel better.

Screw the whole day and what you have to worry about then. You look at right now.

You wake up, don’t want to get out of bed, but you have to. 

So, you start from there.

For me, the next five minutes would consistent of simply making my bed. Then, you ask yourself again, what could I do in the next five minutes to feel better? 

I’d go wash my face and brush my teeth.

Next five minutes, I’d get a cup of coffee. 

It’s breaking things down in to little increments that get me out the bed on the days I don’t want to.

If I’m still feeling down and I have to go to work, I continue on the five minute increments. 

If I feel overwhelmed, I ask what would help. Typically I’ll end up standing in the back or outside, taking a sip of water, and being alone for a moment. 

Don’t expect yourself to be anything more than where you are. 

Some days the world feels so simple to be a part of, but when you feel the weight of it all coming on, taking it off a pound at a time can become your saving grace.

I’m hoping for a better week this week, but until then, we’re taking it one step at a time. 

I know even when I don’t feel it, things will always be okay again.

We always find hope where we least expect it.