I woke up and it was 0709am. I got out of bed. Peed. Wandered around the house a little bit. Did 10 pushups. Now it\u2019s 7:25am. I\u2019m pretty proud and excited, although I don\u2019t even know if I can really take credit for this. How does the subconscious mind-clock even work? Does it know what time it is?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been feeling sleep deprived lately. I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019m actually particularly sleep deprived, more than usual, or if I\u2019m just feeling it. Going through some of my old tweets and blogposts, I\u2019m starting to be convinced that I\u2019ve been chronically sleep deprived for most of the last decade, except for very specific situations \u2013 basically when I was away at the military. That was when I neither had to worry about work nor family, simply follow instructions and not be responsible for anything. Also when I was on vacation, which I am far too sparing with \u2013 that\u2019s something that I regret.<\/p>\n
But here we are. One of my old tweets said, you\u2019re getting old when your regrets start to outnumber your dreams. There was a period of time I remember when I made a big deal out of not regretting anything \u2013 I had a blogpost saying something like, I regret nothing, I accept everything. I wonder why I wrote that. I think I was trying to get ahead of myself, trying to do some PR and positioning for my failures. I failed but I don\u2019t care, I failed but I don\u2019t mind, I failed but it\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n
Trying to be clear about what you \u201creally\u201d think is such a convoluted thing. I was talking to another friend recently who told me that she had an avoidant personality, that she was a people pleaser and she avoided conflict, and she thinks that it had something to do with her family. I\u2019m thinking about that too. My dad had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago. My mother and brother brought him to the hospital, and he had an angioplasty, and he seems to be recovering pretty well now. But still, it\u2019s just been a thing, watching him look weak and frail and at death\u2019s door, basically. In death\u2019s hospital bed. I find myself thinking\u2026 I recognise those hands and feet as my own, but that\u2019s not really my childhood memory of my father. My father was a scary man, when I was a child. He was loud, shouty, often angry. I mean, he\u2019d also laugh. He wasn\u2019t an outright evil person. But he wasn\u2019t a fantastic dad. He was scary to me, on’tas a child. My mother was the pliant one who could be manipulated, cajoled, intimidated most of the time, and she used my father as a sort of threat, as a bogeyman. My parents weren\u2019t really much of a team. I don\u2019t think they saw each other as equals. I definitely used my parents as a model of \u201cwhat I don\u2019t want to be like\u201d.<\/p>\n
(The national anthem is playing at a school, I think.)<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t care very much for my parents. I don\u2019t have a lot of strong feelings. I sit with them for dinner and it can feel like having dinner with strangers. I do remember laughing with them for a good ten minutes in the hospital, laughing about farts. And it was such a great, funny feeling \u2013 but it was also a foreign feeling. So different from childhood. Childhood is a scary place. People often look back and say wow childhood was so fun, childhood was so innocent, childhood was so carefree. Was it really? I\u2019m not sure I relate. I fin myself thinking that childhood was a bit of a noisy, scary place, one where I didn\u2019t have a lot of autonomy, didn\u2019t have a lot of control, didn\u2019t really know what was going on, didn\u2019t really know what my options were, how things were going to turn out for me. And I suppose that partially explains my overall impulsiveness and escapism and avoidant-ness? I am an avoidant person myself. And even this fact is something that often eludes (avoids, ha) me. I want to sit with this truth every day.<\/p>\n
(A bus goes by in the distance. I light a green cone of incense. Birds caw.)<\/p>\n
I need time to appreciate who I am, what I\u2019ve been through, who I\u2019ve become, who I\u2019m becoming. I need time to reflect on the changes of life. I\u2019m 27 years old now. That\u2019s a full grown adult, some people have had multiple children of their own by this age. What a terrible mistake that can be in a stressful world, if you\u2019re not ready \u2013 because then you\u2019re going to rattle your kids with your own lack of self-control, self-regulation. A parent should be a protective membrane for a child, creating for them a nurturing space where they are cared for and challenged in a developmentally appropriate way. Not coddled, not tortured or traumatised.<\/p>\n
The changes of life. How old was Elliott Hulse when he started making his videos? When he got married? Gods, I got married at 22 years of age. I needed to get out. I wanted to get out. It was a great decision for my mental health overall, I think. I\u2019m here now, and I need to prioritise my health and well-being (and my partner\u2019s) repeatedly, and do what needs to be done to make a better life. It\u2019s not technically hard, it just takes the will. It just takes courage. (Courage for our friends.)<\/p>\n
Courage to stand up in the face of fear, and say no more. We will not be conquered any more. We will not live in fear any more. We will not bow down, we will not be afraid, we will not let you control us. We will not let you dictate our stories.<\/p>\n
There are some things in life we\u2019ll never know. Why somebody did something. The general answer is fear and ignorance. The world is a scary, overwhelming and confusing place, and people are very unenlightened. That\u2019s nobody\u2019s fault in particular (though some people throughout history have definitely been in better positions than others to do something about it\u2026 and didn\u2019t do much about it. But that\u2019s fear and ignorance on their part.)<\/p>\n
This has been good. Let\u2019s do it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke up and it was 0709am. I got out of bed. Peed. Wandered around the house a little bit. Did 10 pushups. Now it\u2019s 7:25am. I\u2019m pretty proud and excited, although I don\u2019t even know if I can really take credit for this. How does the subconscious mind-clock even… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[402],"class_list":["post-10773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit","tag-fear"],"yoast_head":"\n