promenadier

[promenadier]

Journal #2

17.10.2024 - Afternoon

I’ve sparsely left my room since Monday night. I’m still trying to figure out exactly why I was hit so hard after such a good Monday. Was it all just too much too quickly?

Monday I met with members of my cohort before my lecture and we had a great conversation. After, I had to give a presentation that went so well in my language class. I was very proud of myself and I don’t remember how I celebrated that, there was no one really to tell. It made me sad. I don’t want to boast to the two friends I do have, my mother might have liked to hear the news, but I can never tell. I think she wants me to come back to my home town. I can’t think of anything more awkward.

I’ll continue to live thousands of kilometers away, slowly cutting every last loose thread that ties me back to my life there. It’s left me lonelier than I thought possible. Building a new life in a new place does not happen over night or even over years.

Tuesday morning I missed all my classes. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do the work for them. I don’t know if I’m sick or convinced I’m sick. The third option is that my body is reeling from malnutrition. It’s been weeks since I had real food. I feel like that’s slowly seeing progress, but I’m addicted to gorging myself now that I have little other options to poison myself with. Junk food and grass.

I thought smoking weed may help me put down drinking for good. I was partially right. But I find more and more that it’s just another addicting way to numb myself, the real temptation that kept me coming back more and more. I don’t like being a servant to it. It makes my life worse I think, giving me something to obsess over unhealthily and leading to a sort of compulsivity for self-pleasure and overindulgence. I’ve thought maybe I’ll pack it away and hide it somewhere I can’t access it. I still have a reasonable amount, considering how little I consume to achieve the desired effect.

I think the last straw this week was missing an important meeting, having the wrong address and still being dazed from hours of lying in bed. I think I slept from 8 Monday night to maybe 2 Tuesday evening. That’s like 18 hours? Something wasn’t right. This was a pretty important meeting for my academics, but not something that wouldn’t have proceeded without me. Maybe I worry too much. Still, it caused me to stumble, or lie through, the entire school week.

Yesterday it was a deep depression and regret over what I had, or hadn’t, done. I just wanted to be away from my bed and screen and in the wilderness with the friends I don’t have. It seemed like a cruel prison to be trapped in, all things considered.

I need a plan for the coming weekend and week. I must do something, go somewhere, see someone. There’s no longer any contentment in turning in alone.

Tomorrow I will go to class, after it I will set off.

-mokcu

[promenadier]

2day’s plans:

12.10.2024 - Midday

I enjoy playing with these weird filters. I have the tech-savviness of an octogenarian sometimes and these things are like the jingling keys in front of my face. The picture was taken fast, but I see the art in it, very feminine and allusive to one’s sex, don’t you see too?

I’m on the train to see a friend. I have to ride backwards even though I get easily sea-sick because there are an insane amount of people on this line today. It is Saturday, but this was the only connection with such a large presence aboard. Sounds mostly like Danes traveling down from wherever. Lots of cops and soldiers too… trying to be on my best behavior! My friend just got to her new apartment in the big city and I love visiting there. My wheelhouse tends to be middle-of-nowhere villages and woods, but going to the city once in a while feels like a wagon-ride to an alien civilization.

We are going to the Cat Café since we are both inclined to all things feline. I’ve been there before and like to steal their mugs because they have cute cats painted onto them. Aiming to get 2 more this time…

After that it’s thrifting and maybe a walk on the harbor. I don’t necessarily want to stay the night in the capital, but my friend’s roomie has a dog that’s super sweet and I’m excited to see. The cat person I am, I love all animals more than anything. I really want to volunteer at the animal shelter I found the other day, but that’s tomorrow’s adventure.

As I write the lady across is trying her luck with a scratch-off. I know it’s impolite to take pictures, but I can’t help but involve myself in her life, her reliance on her luck.

I’m blurring it, I want to respect her privacy, looks cooler too, like Lego.

Luck and Fate and Premonition has controlled my life as of late and I feel myself becoming somewhat spiritual in my allure to these forces. I know one shouldn’t become too lost in the sauce of divination, I myself have had a friend who lost his mind and relied on angel numbers for every aspect of his day-to-day. Not a future I wish for myself, but I guess I mean I’ve just started to trust the universe more and swim with the flow of decision. It’s worked out positively more than negative. It’s part of a greater realization that I will never be able to escape the ebb and flow of time, of life. Maybe cheesy, but it’s a common metaphor or analogy for life in my region. If I let things come to me in time and not fight when the receding tide prevents my rushed action, I end up with a richer life filled with satisfying spontaneity and social wins.

I’m halfway through the long train ride and looking forward to meeting my friend. I’m thankful for her and that her journey in life matches mine despite our differences. It gives me hope for connection elsewhere and happy I have someone to lean back on like I was always unfond of doing. I hope to give her a fraction of the satisfaction she does me. Learning this exchange has been a pivotal part of my recent successes. I’ll greet her with her favorite Haribo!

I’ll take some experiences from today and share them later! Here’s some of the music that’s inspired my mood on this leg of the trip:

[promenadier]

our song of the day

[promenadier]

A first Journal entry - #1

- 11.10.2024 / 00:21

Hi. It’s me.

I’ve decided to put away some of my insecurities and perfectionist hesitation in order to start documenting my life in a relatively easy way to which I, myself, could easily commit. Keeping a journal and writing in it every night is miles more tedious than sitting in bed with my phone. I’ve tried to convince myself that any progress, no matter how minuscule, can be positive. Until recently, I’ve been very absolutist in my approach to self-care. We can’t all be these men with Herculean resolve you may see on YouTube with statues from antiquity as their avatar.

No, in fact, I could never hope to gain anything from going volle Pulle after months in a mental ward and a lingering lust for chemical relief. I’ve been sober for almost 7 months now. Really, this was the only vital change I had achieved among a mountain of other goals piling up as I started a new job, and eventually a new study program. I feel I take it for granted now, knowing I’ve accomplished one thing - keeping me lazed for fear of achieving more, knowing only on a meta-level that I could too lose that success at any moment were I to lose my head.

It’s not without some displeasure that I can accurately report the current whereabouts of my own head. Although still firmly attached to the trunk of my neck, whatever contents within seem to spill, or indeed have spilled out and left my brain, and so my person, nothing more than a vapid and rotting cranial abscess. That all to say: I’m intact and recovering in a medical sense, I have regained control over most of my head, yet the “I” seems to have dissolved to a point at which one becomes forced to look into such a possession to recognize the unrecognizable, the deflated soul, lost so long from me that no memories remain to recollect a coherent personality. There are barely any pieces of myself to collect after years down the bottle, chasing the very numbness that now seems so oppressive and inescapable.

I go through my head, multiple times a day, what makes up my experience in the present. Maybe what brought, brings, would bring, was supposed to bring me joy or some semblance of completeness. Maybe I was always a one-trick pony. I excelled in language classes in school. I was led down a gilded path with seemingly no room for failure. Thus, I skated by on my youthful wit, collecting only entitlement and a predilection for con art. To my amazement, it never once failed me. I graduated a bachelor student with honors. I won distinguished awards. I was offered the detour towards the next gilded slide. Too afraid to ride down, I walked down the steps, meeting my peers at the bottom and feigning commitment and bravery. Meanwhile the lone pony lost track of their trick.

But mere tricks do not add up much merit anyway, I can tell myself there is still time. How can I keep myself from squandering my potential? I seem seduced by the path of least resistance. I’ve fallen so far recently that there is no more skating down and only trudging up. I’m still here with my anxieties and addictions. Where there is no way backward, stagnation will be my demise. One foot in front of the other seems to be the mantra. I’m so bad at pacing myself, admittedly.

You see the steps I’m taking aren’t futile and embarrassing, don’t you?

-mokcu