Small Reminders
Hello all,
Welcome back to our beautiful, chaotic, and messy shores. I am beyond grateful that you have taken the time and energy to sail the seas back here to me this week, I thank you with everything I have. I hope you’re all healthy, happy, and peaceful this week. As for myself, I've had a mix of both a peaceful and stressful week. However, I’m pretty proud of the way I have been handling these situations and the feelings/emotions that come along with them. I am beginning to notice within myself that my perspective and outlook on some situations that come with life have drastically changed, which almost feels like overnight, but trust me it has been a slow work in progress. For example, I had a situation happen to me this week that also happened about 3 months ago. Nothing major or detrimental, just one of life’s situations that you never really plan on happening. In the present of this situation, both times, I found myself feeling different than I did 3 months ago. I didn’t feel panicked, or anxious, or really any anxiety, I did feel a little bit worried, but given the situation I was genuinely surprised that is all I felt. Especially after going through the same thing a couple months prior and being flooded with every bit of panic, anxiety, and anxiousness. When situations like these happen, they always appear to be like little “check-ins” on where I am at emotionally in my life, it almost feels like taking a survey to see where I fall within a specific category. Because of this situation causing me to see the emotional growth within myself, I feel that it is only appropriate to give you a little update on myself and the version of him I have grown into for this week’s journal.
About six months ago, I made a huge decision about myself and my health that I desperately knew I needed to change and work on, which was gaining weight. For being a 21 year old at the time, and also a guy, I was very much underweight and knew that and in a way was okay with that for a while, but was starting to reach a point of wanting to finally be healthy. During my teen years I developed some very bad habits to get myself to the weight I was at, and then during that strange transitional stage to adulthood (18-21), I maintained some of these habits to keep my weight the same because truthfully, I didn’t love myself which I think is because I never gave me time to get to know and care for myself. I was always too busy worrying about others lives, worrying about fixing them while I was killing myself unknowingly, or at times knowingly killing myself because I so desperately wanted to form to what they wanted, even if they never exactly told me what they wanted. When you’re constantly changing yourself like this with literally no sense of direction, I’ve found the only things you truthfully hold onto are the bad habits you’ve picked up. Because now in a way, they’re the only things tying you to the person you were before making the decision to change for some things. I started seeing a nutritionist in December and she put me on a meal plan that I was NOT used to at all and if I am being honest…following this plan in the beginning and watching myself slowly gain weight was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. However, now that I have gained 25 pounds, I can honestly say I am in one of the most happiest, peaceful, and joyful headspace’s I have ever been in, in my life. While on the path to gaining weight, I also made a few smaller decisions, like to grow my hair out, to read and write more, be in nature more, and to force myself to be in the present more than I ever have before. I never would have thought that making these small changes would lead to myself feeling such huge change within my body, my emotions, my mind, and my aura.
Also, this website has helped me immensely, as have all of you. Writing is the one thing I have done and been consistent with my entire life, and now that I have a platform to fully share my work on, on my own time whenever, wherever, I can’t express how happy it truly makes me. Especially when I have the most amazing support around me, which is you. I thank you from the absolute bottom of my heart for your support and reading this week’s journal. I am eternally grateful for you, your mind, your heart, and your tears. Make sure to sail back to these shores throughout the rest of this week for more…
After climbing onto the rocks
And to the top of the cliff
He feared now not feeling the comfort
Of the whirlpool
Because while standing above the sea,
He found new meaning in life
Now that he has realized
That he is free.
With great love always,
M.H. John