I Took a Walk in the Dark

I haven't been active on this space since late August and I had considered moving on to a new blog that could possibly be more professional and something that I would share with people that knew me. I take notoriously long making decisions, so clearly it isn't something that I have decided upon yet. I don't know if this is the right time though because I'm not sure whether posts like this would make it onto it.

I don't think I even fully realised how much I might have missed this space. On my writing tumblr, I have a tagline in my description and it has been the same for years. I remember coming up with it when I frist started posting stories. I was quite chuffed. It read and still reads: When in doubt, she sat down and wrote until the world made sense again ✨.

Writing has been a lot of things for me through the ages. In posts again and again, I have talked about how much being able to produce written words on the screen matters to me. It has been a huge part of my life for a very long time.

The past few weeks have been hard. Weird. Difficult. I feel lost and uprooted in a way that I haven't felt for a long time. Motivation drains before I can ever capture and use it. My mind is scattered all the time and I don't know how to rein it in. I carefully map out all the many things I have to do throughout a week and then... I just cancel half or more of it. I stay in bed. I feel bad, I feel hopeless and I feel angry at myself but I don't change it.

I get into self-destructive patterns. Worst part? I recognise them. I see them coming a mile off, the moment the notion comes into my mind. I know it's a bad idea. I know I should take steps to move in the opposite direction of the bad impulses. Logically, I know exactly what to do most of the time. But I don't follow through with it. My stubbornness have been worryingly absent for an extended period. It all feels a bit empty and pointless.

I justify it because I could be doing much worse things. I don't inflict physical pain on myself, except indirectly by not doing my physiotherapy exercises for my shoulder. I still eat food and drink lots of water. I get roughly the right amount of sleep, even if it fall on the wrong times. But I curl up under my duvet and hide from the world.

I hide from the things I have to do. All of it. I don't move to tackle any of it because I have several different categories blinking red and demanding attention and if I start one, I'd have to do them all and it'll be so much work and I don't know how to catch up now that I've already fallen behind. So instead I pretend that time pauses if I don't look at any of it and I dive into fictional worlds of stories, either in words or visuals. It's escapism, even as my mind whispers that the days move outside of my window whether I want it to or not.

It spirals and that makes it more difficult to break out of. One bad day can too easily turn into several days. If I then manage to get up and start working, I might completely overload myself with a ten hour work day that might be productive but it will almost surely make me retreat the following day from being overwhelmed and worn down.

Here I'm not writing words that haven't already been through my mind repeatedly. You have to start out softer and build up to it. If you pile on too much, you'll just choke again. I know this. Logically. The emotional state is having a little trouble catching up. So tonight, I did something to help shake myself out of it, more gently this time.

I took a walk in the dark. With Halloween just around the corner, it becomes dark already at 6 PM. That was roughly the time that I pulled myself out from under the duvet and decided that a walk around my neighbourhood might be a good idea. I don't really take walks, except if I'm walking our family dog or when I've been without a scooter and had to walk to and from public transport. I never really walk just for myself.

So I thought I would try it. Fresh air after being a shut-in for nearly two days. I decided that I might try to strip down metaphorically and embrace the raw vulnerability that I have been feeling lately. I pulled off my sweat-through night shirt and on a cosy jumper. I purposely didn't reach for my bra, which is highly unusual for me. It was just one of the factors of vulnerability. I didn't put contacts in and I just kept wearing my glasses, which I very rarely wear outside of my home. I found my winter boots with a slight heel that I hadn't used this season yet. I got out the beanie I love but rarely actually wear. Most importantly, I left my phone at home.

I never ever leave without having my phone on me. It's a lifeline. It's a safety net. I listen to music on it, I use it for photos and I like having a constantly line to people. I also use it to track my steps and it almost made me grind my teeth a little to know that I was leaving it behind and that the numbers would not not reflect reality. On my walk, I also saw several beautiful opportunities for photos that I couldn't capture. However, as a photo to accompany this post, I did pick up an autumn leaf and snapped the photo below (while I was essentially blind as I decided to include my glasses in it).

It was odd just walking without a purpose or a time limit. I just put one foot in front of the other and I noted how the click of my heel sounded on the concrete. I felt the wind on my face and pulled my beanie closer around my ears, even as I let my big winter coat hang open. It is odd to see the light be gone so early in the evening already but from now until 21st of December, the days will obviously become shorter and shorter.

I walked to the city garden that belong to the people who live in my apartment complex. I've never really been in there before. I certainly don't have a little patch to grow something, even though I could have if I had wanted to. It was eerily quiet but also peaceful, even so close to a fairly trafficked road. I suppose I find beauty in the fact that you can still have such a little haven in Copenhagen. The streetlights in that area are adorable as well, they have proper old-school lamp shades hanging over the lights, which creates an almost homely atmosphere.

I kept walking further out, while palming a Nutella glass which I had placed in my winter coat's big pockets before heading out. I had thought that we had a recycle facility for glass and plastic in the courtyard but I would only find containers for bio and paper. I did pass somewhere that I could drop the glass, but they noted that the jars should have been washed beforehand and I hadn't thought of that, so I just kept walking.

I went to the university building across the street from my flat. None of them are my university but still, as a student, I find university campuses oddly comforting. It still applies even in my current state of stressing over how far behind I am on all the readings for the courses this semester. Fellow young people educating themselves just makes something settle in me. I walked to the small canal and looked over the water in it.

Bodies of water have often been described, now so much that it's almost cliché, to have a calming effect. I wanted to call bullshit on it but... I can't. Watching the moonlight reflecting in the waves, moving in calm and predictable patterns, were calming for me. I walked along the ledge of the water on the little elevated path to serve as a fence. I know people are not supposed to walk on it. One good gust of wind, which was indeed swirling around me, I could potentially have fallen in. It wouldn't have been ideal but at the same time, the path was wide enough that I could walk on it comfortably so I wasn't budging. After a trip back and forth, I even jumped down to the little area below and sat in some of the chairs littered around. The wind is always more prominent near water, where it can be allowed to pick up speed.

I like the wind. I find something cleansing about it. When I was a child biking to school, I would sometime talk to the wind, as if it was a real thing, like a person. Like a God of Wind that was my friend and who would sometime help give me the push over hills when I needed it. I still find myself indulging in that old tale at times. It's comforting and it makes me feel a little less alone when I'm out by myself. I have an invisible companion dancing around me, nudging me forward gently.

I climbed on everything I could climb on the way back. Ever opportunity, I would jump up on things and walk along them. I felt like a child again and it was nice to just indulge. My attention would be on not slipping in my, admittedly poor choice of food-wear for walking on uneven things. It was a nice distraction and getting out in the fresh air always helps. It's another one of those things that I know but it can still be so difficult for me to a actually do it.

Another thing that helps is writing. I still write my little seven minute journal entires everyday but even those have felt like a chore lately. I have updating chaptered stories were the readers are excitedly waiting to read the next chapters but I have hardly worked on it, despite loving the story and the characters. I have just felt lost and I have used that as an excuse not to try. It feels hard, so I just shy away from it. It's a passion of mine but it doesn't mean that it will always be easy. I'm just glad that it is most of the time. It feels like playing to let my imagination loose and create stuff.

This piece feels like play too. A smile just crept up on my face upon writing that. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I haven't been using this blog for a while. I let ideas and plans halt my use for it completely but at the same time, I don't know that I'm ready to write differently. I might want to be able to connect my name to my writing but I also don't want to feel like I have to censor myself. So I have let myself be caught in the middle of the two spaces, while my university workload have crippled me. It's not a healthy combination.

Writing is my therapy. Remember that line from my writing tumblr? The world hasn't been making sense for me lately and I have been riddled with doubt but for some reason, I hadn't turned to writing at all. It was almost like I forgot how writing like this makes me feel. How it puts things into perspective and how it makes it a little easier to tackle my actual real world instead of just diving into other people's functional ones to escape. Our world can be a very scary place but it's still our world and it's the only one we're going to get. Even when I write my own fictional universes, I'm pulling on my experiences from this world. I can't stop living in it and I don't have the power to freeze time.

It's an illusion that freezing time would make things easier. Even if it was physically possible then I doubt that it would do anything to better my mental health. Time moves on. The sun rises and sets every single day. It's a beautiful thing, as much as it can be terrifying. No matter how much you feel stuck or struggling, there will be a new day and things won't stay the same. The only constant we can expect is change. I suppose that sentence is an oxymoron in itself. I might feel like time is moving too fast, but I'm certainly not helping to slow down my perception by disappearing into my computer or my phone screen for endless hours each day, almost obsessively.

I took a walk in the dark tonight, without my phone and without my usual amour in my appearance. I was gone for an hour, and I even did a stop at the grocery shop on the way back. It was an hour that would have passed in the blink of an eye in front of my screen, while binge watching something.

I need to remind myself of the concept of moderation. I need to summon my stubbornness and initiate the things I know will help me not to fall into a slump, even if it will be difficult. Maybe if I just start with putting one foot in front of the other it will be okay.