Magic amidst chaos

April hit me like a ton of bricks. I was constantly undermined. Misunderstood. Made feel stupid. Made feel small. And here I am. Still kicking. Humans are like trees, or however the analogy goes.

Of course, as a girl who can be a really bad vibe sometimes, I’m against trying to find the postitive in every situation. I am a complainer first, but these past few weeks made me realize I can take more than I believe I can. Do I wish none of that happened to me? Yes. But, what is life without a little friction, anyway?

On a particular difficult day I found myself reading Lena Dunham’s essay on how she became a filmmaker. In it she talks about how after college she lived with her parents because she was broke, and how she couldn’t hold a job for longer than five months. She also mentions that she was so eager to connect with like minded people that she would latch onto anyone who share similar ambitions. People like Greta Gerwig, and the Safdie brothers were around her circle. There is something comforting about reading how lost, and much of a “flop” successful people used to be. It gives me hope that one day I too will get to “make it”. That my circumstances will change. I don’t pretend to be anything like them, I couldn’t even if I wanted to, but even then, it makes me feel less alone when I read that most often than not the path to success is not linear, easy, or pretty. Most directors, writers, artists worked minimum wage jobs before getting famous. Even after fame, a lot of them couldn’t afford groceries or rent. It’s like a rite of passage. An unfortunate one, but a real one, nonetheless.

April drained me so much that I didn’t even feel physical exhaustion after working on my feet nine hours. It was like my body was in shock. All emotions and sensations buried beneath my skin waiting to come out, but never feeling like there was a right time for it. Or the safe space to do so. I felt like a robot. I had no appetite. I wasn’t excited about anything. I didn’t care about anything. I was a carcass of myself.

After two weeks of this, I realized I needed to do something to feel like a human again because it wasn’t sustainable and my train of thought was scaring me. There were three things that I incoporated into my routine to add a bit more light into my days. The first one was lighting a candle first thing in the morning. I rescued a cat a couple of months ago, and my other two cats are still getting used to sharing space with her, so at night I keep them locked in my room with me, which means I’m sleeping with their litterbox right next to me bed, and that when I wake up my room smells like a used bathroom. To make the whole thing more bereable I’ve been lighting one or two candles as soon as I wake up, and it has been making my morning feel more cozy.

The second one, and the most important, was doing yoga every morning. I’ve been practicing regularly for seven years, but now it has become a daily practice and dedicating 10, 15, 30 mins of my morning to move my body and allow myself to being present in the moment really made me feel more connected to myself. I skipped only twice, and my body felt horrible the entire day. Lesson learned.

The third one was doing something social even if I was tired or wasn’t feeling extremely conversational that day. I never though I was the type of person who would let their job rule their lives to the point that they forgot to take care of themselves, but for a little while I did. As soon as I was out of that initial shock I scheduled hangouts with friends, phonecalls, movie dates. I tried to make at least one plan per week and it just made everything better. At least for a little while.

The more I think about this month, the more I realize that I don’t have a real reflection about it. Sometime life just sucks. Being working class sucks. Having to work to pay bills sucks. Retail fucking sucks. But life is so much more than that. Life is people.

When I get to be around people that I love and who love me, I get the sense that something bigger than us is in the air. Knowing that, as difficult as I am, people still choose to love me, to me, is divine. I do not need to believe in otherworldly beings to believe in magic. Magic is right in front of me. It’s in the friends who let me complain about work every single day and don’t try to make me look at the positive side of things. It’s in my mom, who tired from work, chops veggies for me so that when I get home, I get to make dinner faster. It’s in the cashier who is extra nice for no particular reason. It’s in the dinner my friend and her boyfriend cooked for us one night. It’s in the movies, and the music, and the books. It’s in the arts.

We must believe that there is more to life than our circumstances. We must believe that there’s more to us than what we assume. Not in hopes of greatness, but in seek of newness. Change. Wonder.

I don’t ever want to feel like I did this month, but I know I will, because that’s just the cycle of life. At least I’ll know there’s always a way out.