Summer's End
I’ve been working on finding joy in my life.
For a while, I just couldn’t. I would wake up every day, work my hours, and then spend the rest of the evening in front of the TV or glued to my phone doomscrolling through Twitter. I had nothing to look forward to. Days were endless cycles. I was miserable. I put off sleeping because waking up would mean facing another full day. Minutes felt like hours and hours felt like days. Celebrations that usually marked the passage of time went by unnoticed and now feel like remembering a dream after waking up.
I started therapy in May because I knew none of this was healthy. I was in a financially stable enough position to do so. I’m not ashamed to admit I go to therapy. I think everyone should go to therapy or at least try it in their life at one point. Our mental health is just as important as our physical health; our mental health can have a direct impact on our physical health. I went mostly to work on my anxiety as I found myself constantly unable to eat or worried about the littlest thing or so overwhelmed by my own thinking that I would just be paralyzed with inaction. There was some depression mixed in there as well as those two tend to exist together. My therapist has been great and has walked me through so many exercises to help me better myself or at the very least be more aware of myself enough to notice what’s happening and shift my thinking to be healthier and more realistic. We talk through my thoughts. I share my life experiences. I paint him a picture of my day to day, my upbringing, all the themes and changes in my life that have led me to being me and he helps me understand which thoughts are my reality and which ones I’m catastrophizing.
When I turned 28 in May, I set a list of goals for myself for the next year. One of them was “to be more present.” I didn’t know that goal had been mine for a while until I read through old journal entries from the past few years and had seen it scribbled on a few different pages. But, like most not-well-thought-out goals, the vagueness of it made it impossible to complete. What do I mean by more present? How will I know when I’ve gotten there? Will I even be aware of when I’m more present or will I have to see it in hindsight?
One of the healthiest ways to combat your anxiety is just noticing your own thinking. Anxiety can be tricky. Sometimes the thoughts you convince yourself are so real, so visceral, so tangible, are just not true. They may begin from some valid feeling but they balloon a hundred times their size until they’re the only thing you can think about. Your job is to stop them. You have to notice that the anxiety-thought is there. You acknowledge it. You validate it. And then you set it free. You release it from yourself. Mixed in with noticing your thoughts is gaining an awareness of your body. Does your body react before you even notice these thoughts? How does your body react to these thoughts? How’s your heartbeat? Is there tension in your shoulder?
A byproduct of this exercise for me has been an added appreciation of the world around me. I distinctly remember the first time I got good at noticing. I was laying on top of my bed a few minutes before I was supposed to start getting ready for my workday. I took a few deep breaths. Released the tension from my body. Focused on my shoulders and let them drop. My mind wandered and I heard the birds chirping outside my window. It felt pleasant to hear the birds - to acknowledge that they exist and are outside my window and are just coming into this world. That nature and life still exist even when the endless routine days I had been living made the entire world feel as though it was just confined to my home and my screen.
I moved back to New York in August. After months of unintentionally living back home in CT, the time felt right to leave. I didn’t have space. I didn’t have a minute to myself. The moments of joy I tried to cultivate were fewer and farther between. My therapist and I tried hard to make those moments feel natural and purposeful in my daily routine. I was tasked with spending a few mornings, before the workday, just sitting outside with a cup of coffee underneath the sun listening to the world around me. Some days were easier than others – when the weather was nice or when I woke up refreshed. But, others it was hard and I felt like a failure and felt like I was letting myself down and my therapist down. I needed to live a life for myself and one where I was able to control how I went about it. I also needed a change of scenery.
This past weekend was the first one since moving here where I really felt like I made time for myself. On Friday, I woke up at 6:30 am from the light of the sunrise, made myself coffee with freshly ground beans, tackled a majority of my to-do list, went to a bookstore for the first time since February, cooked myself a nice dinner, watched the sunset from my apartment, and cozied up to a movie for the night. There was nothing particularly special about the day and I’m sure in a few weeks’ time I’ll forget it all together, but it was the first hint of normalcy in quite a while, a feeling of independence, and a feeling of pleasant solitude that I so desperately needed for months.
My joys aren’t monumental. They’re fresh coffee in the morning. They’re a Sunday afternoon in the park. They’re a light breeze on a 78-degree day. They’re a walk through a tree-lined neighborhood. They’re the smell of toast about to pop up from your toaster. They’re the first whiff of detergent when you pull out your laundry from the machine. They’re the golden beams of light that move across your wall as the sun begins its descent.
I feel much calmer now. I feel like I’m returning to myself. I’ve been reading more. I’ve had more energy. I’ve set up boundaries in my life. I’ve even spent time with friends and loved ones outside, enjoying each other’s company, laughing full-bellied laughs, drinking underneath a blue sky - or at one point, underneath a blue tarp in the rain.
These times are not the same for everyone. Everyone is struggling in one degree or another. Joys are hard to find. Days feel listless. But, the joys are out there. They may not be grand and they may not be the joys we had before, but they’re there and they exist and they’re there for you to find and cultivate yourself. You just need to stop and look.