Laying in bed staring at the ceiling or the TV while my brain turned into mush used to be a lifestyle for me a few years ago. This was when I was going through the thick of it. I was alone in San Diego, trying to process the chaos that was my life. The decimation of my dreams and expectations. 

Every single fiber of my being was numb. I felt nothing. I felt no motivation to pursue life. I took a week off from work and stayed in bed, momentarily getting up to feed and walk my dog.  The breath of fresh air that I used to enjoy so much felt intrusive majority of the time now. I just wanted to sink into the mattress, become one with the comforter, morph into the materialistic stillness of my furniture, where I did not have to feel. There was peace in mimicking to be an inanimate object. Feeling hurt too much.

Thinking and repeating every single day for the past 7 years in my head was beyond overwhelming. It was taxing to my Soul, my being, my everything. “This is it” I thought. “My life has no meaning; my future has no substance.” No matter how hard I tried, I could not see past the current situation. It was like I was stuck in limbo, between earth and hell, alone, broken, desperate, irrecoverable. This was me in August 2023.

August 2024:

A notification popped up on my phone this morning at 3:00am, August 27th 2024. As I tried to adjust my eyes to the darkness, the little scheduled Calendar note that I had written last year at the exact time on the same date became clear. I had written a lengthy note to myself as I lay wide awake on my bed, which was most of the first few months of 2023. 

As I read the note, the tears that I have locked away for a year now slowly made their way down my cheeks, bursting the protective damn I’ve built for myself. I was crying for the girl, who was in bed writing a note to herself to get upand push past the pain. I was crying for the girl whose heart was absolutely wrecked but was motivating the little girl inside her to push past the fear, the pain, the destruction, telling her to rise like the Phoenix. I had forgotten about the reminder I set myself in 2023 for 2024. One of the questions I wrote down to ask myself in 2024 was “how are you doing today?”

Well, I can tell that girl in 2023 that I am a fucking Warrior. I am proud of the Woman that girl is today. I am proud of me. Am I where I need to be? No. Do I have everything that I wanted to accomplish by 38? No. Am I the happiest I have ever been? Hellyea!

This is just the beginning. Transformation begins with accepting the apathy of the moment but not residing in that moment forever. It is so easy to stay in pain, accept the failure, become resentful. It takes work to get up every day, push past all of that and believe in yourself. We come into this world alone and we leave the world alone, therefore it is so imperative to be your number 1 motivator. It is wealth to experience the sort of pain that brings out a Warrior from the docile. As negative as that sounds, I would have never learned how to love myself, better myself and work on myself if I had not gone through last year.  Yes, there was a loss, yes it hurt like hell (still does some days)but nothing is more beautiful than to learn how to survive that and use it to help others.

We are all interlinked in this whirlwind called “Life” whether we like it or not. Some of us have a great card dealt to us, but most of us learn survival skills through situations that either we create or are handed down to us. Apathy is an emotion that is so prevalent nowadays, especially because we are so zoned in on social media. We lack motivation to build ourselves, build relationships, fix relationships or affect the World in a positive manner. I am guilty of this. Somedays I just want to lay in bed still and waste away. If it wasn’t for that note from 2023 that popped up in my notification, maybe that would have been a pattern that I would have slipped back into. 

If today you feel apathetic, anxious, let down, broken, or even just want to quit everything. I urge you to just get up! take a deep breath and step out into the World again. I know it’s hard, I know it’s easier to just throw in the towel, but you have come so far. We have come so far. If I can do it, you can as well! Things might not get better today, not even tomorrow or a year from now but what matters is that you get up, try, and try till it does. Some days will be harder than others and its on those days that you remind yourself that YOU deserve happiness, you deserve to be the best version of yourself, and you deserve everything that was taken away from you. 

“My darling, you have to be standing up in order to be able to fall. I mean, if you keep sitting on your ass, nothing’s gonnahappen. Only brave warriors fall off their horses in battle. How can kneeling cowards know what a fall is?” – Saroj Rai from The Monsoon Wedding