the year i died
Since turning 34 years old, I have been in Portugal, Japan, Qatar, the Netherlands and now, California. The last time I was in San Diego was in January and to be honest, I didn’t think I would be back so soon but surprise, surprise.
Being back in San Diego means many things one of which means access to mushrooms… uhh.. yes, the culinary kind 😏. Usually these culinary mushrooms give me a nice little bodily sensation and the giggles. I had planned to spend the evening editing videos on my iPad. Yes, I am a 34 year old iPad kid and proud of it. BUT the mushies had other plans! When they hit, beloved reader, those mushrooms uppercut me with the vicious force of Mike Tyson in his prime.
This was no cute Scooby Doo psychedelic experience, there was no auditory or visual hallucinations. I was confronted with the fact that I was once a beautiful, plump, naive, happy caterpillar and I went through a metaphorphisis. When I tell you I cried, I mean I sobbed FOR HOURS.. but very quietly because I am staying at my parents house and I can’t tell them that my trip was foiled by emotional diarrhea. It felt like high school again, I swear moments keep me young in spirit.
Before this, I haven’t cried about this past year in a while. I thought I made tons of progress and was finally moving on from it. But I was wrong and the flood gates opened. I cried because I was angry that no matter how much I tried it felt like nothing I did helped. Then I cried because EVERY aspect of my life was in its flop era and I didnt even own a car, which has never happened before! I cried because I went to Paris, London, Madrid, Porto and was so miserable that I also cried there so I was just on a international crying tour. I cried out of frustration because I felt like I wasted so much time and energy. Then I cried because I was crying about crying. I fell asleep to some 8 hour YouTube beauty affirmation video I found. If I was going to be a loser, I at least want to be a beautiful loser and beauty is currency for women. This was my mushroom logic, I dont know.
The next day I woke up feeling I had purged a demon. Not that I have any experience purging demons but I felt great, refreshed, lighter! My waist even felt smaller and ass felt fatter. I decided that I no longer wanted to see that time of my life as that story. I felt like I needed to revise the story! Even though ugliness and depression was 95% of my life at that time and it metaphorically feels like I died, the other 5% was as pleasant as it could have been given the circumstances. I decided I needed to focus on that 5%. Something good has to eventually come out of it, just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it will not happen. I am just skipping to the part where I start saying “I had to go through that because something good came out of it”. It kind of feels like I cheated and googled the ending of the movie.
I miss the happy, playful old version of me I was before this all happened. I wish I could be her again but I know I can’t. I think about her all the time and how joyful and carefree she was. I used to wonder if in some alternate universe, I didn’t meet the people I met and I didn’t make the decisions I made, would the other me not have gone through what I experienced or would she have been just as sad for not being brave enough to do it. She probably would have been haunted by “I wish I would have done it” and “I wonder what would have happened if I did it”
