Push.

I'm writing this because trying to verbalize any and all feelings I'm having right at this moment seems almost impossible. Sometimes, I zone out from the world, staring off into nothing, and I realize my brain is trying to scrape together words that might summarize it.

It's not sadness. It's not nothingness. It's not worthlessness. It's not a lack of something, so much as a presence of something else. When you swallow a thick food, like a wad of hot mashed potato and it burns and sticks in the back of your throat and there's a strain of a choking to get it all down? If that was an emotion, this would be it. When you look in the mirror in the middle of the night, half asleep and you don't recognize yourself, and you don't like what you see. When you know you need something but you won't get it for yourself, whether it's because of empty batteries or because whogivesafuck. When life seems impossibly, agonizingly long from the point where you're standing, and you're not looking forward to it.

Knowledge about mental health is REALLY important to me. It's an issue close to my heart in so many places, through so many people, and I try to educate myself on it as much as I can. And I can say with some conviction that I think I'm suffering an episode of at least mild depression. I didn't want to use that term because it's serious but... I've never felt like this before. I'd been sad, but this is something else. I've never actually been depressed before... Not until now. I just woke up one day and it was...different.

The blog Hyperbole and a Half has a pretty apt explanation of what I'm feeling like right now:

"At first, I'd try to explain that it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything — even the things you love, even fun things — and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is. "

And while what I'm experiencing is not as extreme, shreds of it resonate with me. (Read the whole post here, the insights are amazing, heart breaking and sincere.) The feelings go away if I push.

My new motto. "Push." Push to go for a run. Push to do something you like, even a little something, like baking an easy batch of cookies. Push to wear something other than sweatpants. Push yourself to see the people you love, even if you're afraid, afraid of crying at them, or staring at them without being able to relate to their overall goodness, or afraid of being misunderstood. Push to get out of the house. Push to try and sing like I used to.

I'm trying a little bit every day to get better, because as much as whatever it is I'm dealing with wants me to be nothing, and do nothing about fixing it, I am pushing to help myself. To engage. It's not easy, but I can't let it beat me, because I don't want to live this way. I want to love life again, or I should want that, so I do want it, somewhere deep down. I'm reading a book about cognitive behavioural therapy to try and fix whatever's gone awry.

Let's waste time chasing cars.

Today, I felt okay. Maybe okay for the first time I have in awhile. I kind of felt like... maybe everything wasn't pointless. It sounds borderline-omg-put-that-girl-on-24-hour--death-watch, but today I went out biking and I was nervous around the cars, because I have things to live for. Something clicked and today, I mattered, and maybe even though I'm not sure where I'm going and I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be, there IS a place for me somewhere.

Some part of me acknowledged that a big part of my problems are just wild insecurities, confidence issues not yet resolved.
Maybe I do matter to the people I love, the people who love me, and it's only the ugly voice of poor self confidence that's telling me I'm being replaced and it doesn't matter, that I'm not good enough for them, that I've changed for the worse, and that every choice I make from here on out will be a mistake.

Strangely, it helped to go to the thrift store and try on clothes that both fit and looked good. The weight gain over the trip and the summer so far have only made me furious with myself, and today I think I realized that it's going to be okay. Finding the perfect fit just felt like, no matter what size I am, I can still choose something that's me. I can still be myself. That I'm going to fight back somehow and go on without drowning. I went for an intense bike ride and took on as many hills as I wanted, never stopping to walk on any of them. Regardless of a number on the scale, I feel like my body is getting stronger every day. (I'm almost 15 days into my "23 before 24" goal of maintaining a fitness regime for three months!)

It also helped that I looked in the mirror and it was the first time in awhile that I didn't feel plain or ugly. There was a glimmer of something in the mirror. Something beyond pretty or beautiful, beneath the surface. Maybe it was the unique thing that makes me... me and today was the first day in a long time that I really felt like myself again.

I don't know what to make about any of this, I just know that it's good, I hope it lasts, and even more than that, I hope it keeps getting better. 

Progress.

Progress on the 23 before 24 list, thus far.

3/23 completed. 

 My 23 before 24 list.

1. Visit a new city! -- Melbourne, Australia.

2. Make proper macarons.

3. Get another tattoo.

4. Run 10K. (Again!)

5. Accept a compliment gracefully.

6. Read 12 books. -- You Suck & A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins. 3/12

7. Make more time for dancing. 

8. Send letters to people I love.

9. Maintain a fitness routine for 3 months. -- In progress!

10. Find my signature beer/cocktail.

11. Learn how to use dad's SLR camera.

12. GO HIKING!

13. Learn "hello" and "I love you" in 3 more languages. (Bonus: Learn simple Russian phrases to talk to Babcia.)

14. Shoot a blog video for Bite Club.

15. Finish a third slam poem, for a full set, just in case...

16. Surprise someone!

17. Ask someone out. (Bonus points: in person. Forget texting and Facebook.)

18. Drag out on Halloween.
19. Actually print off and frame some of the photos I've taken. 

20. Learn things about latte art. (Like, oh, I dunno, how to do it.)

21. Stay out all night, until the sun comes up, because it sounds like a movie or a book or a song, and who knows how long it will be before you can't do it anymore?

22. Get rid of some old stuff.

23. Make a 24 before 25. (Never quit striving!)

Not mine, must be yours.

I'm not even back from Australia a week, but already I'm longing for the sweet pause that is disappearing from your own life. The funny thing, is while I was in the Outback, seeing more stars than I could ever dream of, kicking up red dirt, I really missed home. Now, I arrive home only to realize things have shifted in my absence, I'm less sure of everything in my future than I thought I was, and I no longer feel like I have a place anywhere. 
I think the need to belong, whether it's in a family, a group of friends, at work, or within society as a whole, is pretty strong in all of us. Sometimes I feel like with me, it's both a fuelling and destroying force. When I'm something to somebody, when I feel needed, a lot of my insecurities melt away and I'm happy.. But when I feel like I'm on the outside, anything good turns bad, and everything bad turns worse. My future. My body. My relationships, or lack thereof.

I had a weird moment today, when I was helping move some things into my kid sister's apartment. She's moving to the big city for school, and living with our cousin. If I go through the motions and get into baking school, then get the cajones to drop out of university, there's a chance I could be living there too in the third, unoccupied bedroom. The place was nice. Gleaming hardwood floors, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances. Glass coffee tables and enough light. I felt sick to my stomach. The place was nice, but it wasn't me.

I missed my apartment in Montreal. With the excessive stairs, the uneven, creaking floors, the little back balcony. The art on the walls and the vintage trunk for a coffee table. The neighbors downstairs who play their music really loud at 3AM on random weekends. My apartment. Where I knew I had a place for myself, because I had made it. The girls already had some of their furniture moved in, none of it really suiting my own tastes,  and I could imagine months and months from now, that it wouldn't be so much that I moved in with them, but that I would move in AROUND them. I know this is ridiculous. I know that if I had to suck it up and put in the work and the sacrifice to get what I want, I would. I would move into that apartment.

But until that moment when I saw my potential future, the small empty spare room in someone else's apartment, shit, someone else's life, it finally hit me how much I was going to be giving up if I had to make the move. Montreal will always be better than Toronto in my heart, today just clarified that.

My insecurities and uncertainty only ran yet more wild when I realized later in the day that I don't even feel secure in my place in Montreal anymore.  My friends there have been building their beautiful lives in my absence. OBVIOUSLY, I mean, I'm not an egomaniac, the world wasn't going to stop when I was gone and I knew that. But still.... The fear that I'll return there, only to stand on the sidelines, only to be nothing is...rampant and strong. That I don't have a place at all... I was so anxious and irritable and heartsore over all of it, I passed out for 3-4 hours, hoping the feeling would disappear. It didn't.

Strong ideas that I don't have a place in the now, and I don't know anything about my place in the future.

23 before 24.

This is in progress of being written and re-written, but I couldn't resist. It's still being edited, I even changed some between the typed version and the photo below, but hey, it's my list and it ain't my birthday yet, so I can do WHATEVER I WANT.

 

 My 23 before 24 list. (Thus far.)

1. Visit a new city!

2. Make proper macarons.

3. Get another tattoo.

4. Run 10K. (Again!)

5. Accept a compliment gracefully.

6. Read 12 books.

7. Make more time for dancing. 

8. Send letters to people I love.

9. Maintain a fitness routine for 3 months.

10. Find my signature beer/cocktail.

11. Learn how to use dad's SLR camera.

12. GO HIKING!

13. Learn "hello" and "I love you" in 3 more languages. (Bonus: Learn simple Russian phrases to talk to Babcia.)

14. Shoot a blog video for Bite Club.

15. Finish a third slam poem, for a full set, just in case...

16. Surprise someone!

17. Ask someone out. (Bonus points: in person. Forget texting and Facebook.)

18. Drag out on Halloween.
19. Actually print off and frame some of the photos I've taken. 

20. Learn things about latte art. (Like, oh, I dunno, how to do it.)

21. Stay out all night, until the sun comes up, because it sounds like a movie or a book or a song, and who knows how long it will be before you can't do it anymore?

22. Get rid of some old stuff.

23. Make a 24 before 25. (Never quit striving!)

Fails.

Bek took me to an amazing delicious dinner out tonight in honour of my upcoming 23rd birthday. On the bus back to the apartment, she asked me if I was ready to be twenty-three and I think at first I snorted and then sat back and thought about it. "I feel failurely." Which is not BEING a failure, I'd just like to clarify, it's being fail-ish. Which is like being in transition. Now I realize you don't get to have your life de-rubixed by the age of twenty-three, hell, people never really SOLVE life, they just deal with it as it goes. I can't help but feel...lacking.

Bek said you can't fail until you give an answer, and if you're looking for answers, then technically, failure is impossible because you're still searching. I said, "I just feel failish. Not just this whole school career dilemma. Just. Everything."

"Like what?"

At the time I couldn't think of any like whats, but now it's 5AM and I'm typing this and it's all coming into place. Like whats: The weird stumbling drunken two steps forward, one step back that is my love life. My weird relationship with food, which, although much better than previously, is still pretty manic in terms of "yo-yo" weight gain. This links into my weird relationship with my body. My place in the world. My sense of style-- if I have one. The fact I haven't been to a dentist in a long time. The fact that I've had a credit card for more than 3 years and only RECENTLY figured out just how they work. I don't know. Maybe we need to account for the small victories but I'm not feeling positive enough to pull that off right now, so I'll leave that for another day. BUT.

I realize compared to some people, I more or less have my shit together, at least emotionally. (Hellooo volunteer coordinating) but I feel like it's all this shallow surface stuff. I can cook a decent (hell, maybe even an amazing) meal, I know job interview protocol, some rules of social etiquette. But...it's not enough.

So I'm going to do some soul and goal searching and come up with a "23 before 24" list. Maybe I'll post it. Who knows. 

Crying in public is as weird as it sounds.

I cried today while making "Pros and Cons" lists, one for staying in university, and one for jumping ship and heading to pastry school. I was sitting in the park near my flat, under a tree, writing them, listening to "Make the Money" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and I just. started. crying.

In the fucking park.

I realized that no matter what choice I make, it's not going to be an easy one. That staying in Montreal could now just be as difficult as leaving it. This fork in the road of my life is so distinct that it feels like ONE or the OTHER right now. And I know no matter what I do, I'll walk down the path and look back over my shoulder every step of the way, wondering about my choices.What's worse? If I stay here, I'll wonder if I stayed because it was the easier option. If I go, I'll wonder if I bailed out of fear.

I've been talking to everyone. And I mean everyone. I'm one 'elderly-wise-black-lady-on-a-bench-at-a-bus-stop' short from collecting the opinions of the entire world on the matter. Not usually something I do, because I'm easily swayed by people and I want to have a clear head. But this is different, everyone has starkly different beliefs on the matter.

When I finally told my parents I was thinking about culinary school, I was expecting some sort of reasonable response from the two of them. "A degree is important in today's world" or "Think about the money." My dad has always said he could see me as a professor, so I thought at least he would disapprove of the notion of it. And my mom-- always supportive, but usually supplying caution-- you know what my mom said? She picked this moment in life to turn into a sparkly fairy mom mother and whipped out the Disney classic: "follow your heart. Do what makes you happy."

Writing and baking both make me happy. I am never going to lose my taste for literature or fresh baked anything, let's be honest. On Skype with Jill the other day, she said I've been writing longer than I've been baking, but  thinking back, I've been doing BOTH to express myself since I was pretty damn young.

I remember when I was a kid-- god knows how old-- I had a major crush on my neighbor, Rob. He was older and super cute and really nice to me, when the other kids picked on me for being roly poly. But I would have rather smothered to death in a vat of buttercream than admit it out loud. Hell, I didn't even admit it to myself at the time, because that's how stupid I felt it was. What did I do? I baked that boy a fucking cake from scratch on his birthday. To my memory, my first EVER cake from scratch. A two layer vanilla cake in heart shaped pans with vanilla frosting and green lettering on top because that shit was Rob's favourite colour. 

The only reason I never thought of baking as a career option before was because I thought I wasn't good enough at it. I thought writing was the only skill I had in my toolbox worthy of being turned into a job. The only way I could ever succeed was by forming words into sentences into paragraphs into thoughts.

And I was okay with that, because I loved writing. I still love writing. Writing is my everyday. I love poetry and blogs and articles, and I love taking a confused mess and editing it to be clean and concise, while keeping someone's voice fully intact. What my clumsy mouth fails to say, my words express with pitch perfect clarity on paper. I love reading. I love learning hidden meanings and history. Suddenly though, I have another road. I have another choice that I never saw before and I have no clear way to turn. All I want is to make the right choice. But there are no wrong answers here, so how do you pick?

Follow your heart. Do what makes you happy?

I am not happy right now. Indecision sucks.