Recovery is an Endless Waltz

When you have a pent up emotion it can be difficult to concentrate on anything else. I made this playlist to help me cry out what I wanted to cry out. Its therapeutic to release feelings that are sitting on your chest.

When I was a younger nerd, I was obsessed with an anime called Gundam Wing. One of the quotes from that show is:

"History is just like an endless waltz: the first three beats of War, Peace and Revolution continue on forever."

We are living through horribly interesting times. With a world pandemic, the aftermaths of political unrest, and the general state of woe we all seem to be stuck in, I think it is important to find a moment to let it all go.

We cannot fix the world we are in from one day to another nor can we carry the weight of that without some serious side effects. So, wrap yourself in your favorite blanket, get yourself comfortable, and listen to recovery so you can learn to let go of all those stresses clinging to you.

The first thing you need to do is forgive yourself.

So you did not get yourself in shape or write a novel while in quarantine, so what? What you did do is survive a global pandemic the likes of which the world has never seen. It helped me to write about my experience, to get out all the emotion I was feeling, but sometimes you just want your hand held through a process.

There is nothing wrong with needing a little help sometimes. I know, I know, asking for help is one of the most difficult things to do for some people. It certainly is for me. Yet there are many useful therapeutic resources online to turn to.

In fact, with a quick google research, I found three!

Pride Counseling -LGBTQ focused help

Better Help - Something designed for adults and for the younger crowd.

7 Cups - a free service from what I can tell!

Sometimes it can feel like the loneliest moment in the world to be alone with your thoughts.

I am a person that loves being alone. I used to go out with a book and just read in a plaza, eat dinner by myself, just enjoy my surroundings in peace. I was among people but not involved with them. Now, I miss the simple act of sharing a conversation with someone that is not related to me! I had the special privilege of doing quarantine twice over, in Spain and in the United States.

Though I am grateful to be home and thus less alone than I was in Spain, I miss the social life I had there before quarantine. I had planned an entire dream trip to Italy for my insanely long two week spring break and it broke my little corazon to have to cancel all my plans because of Covid-19.

Gone were my tours, my flights, my train rides, and generally all the effort that I had put into discovering and enjoying a place I had always wanted to visit. I was isolated in my one-bedroom apartment which was already a mess because it was a rather old place.

We were only allowed outside during certain hours and there were literal army officers on the streets enforcing this in the first couple of days. It was a scary time, certainly a lonely time, and I did what I do best which was to distract my mind from the end-of-the-world nature of it all.

I watched everything I had wanted to see on Netflix, I had more muse for my original stories than I had in years and thus wrote, I even still worked as a teacher online for my students in Spain that were also growing mad being stuck inside their homes all day.

My steam eventually ran out. I could not keep running away. I could not avoid the struggle any longer.

So, I let myself feel it all.

It was pretty much like granting myself permission to grieve in a way. It sounds a bit selfish but in truth I needed it. I was away from my family when they were going through something very difficult, isolated from my friends when they needed me most, and I was alone in a shitty, hot apartment with no one to turn to.

It felt good to put aside my armor that I held up for everyone else. It really was more for their benefit than mine that I pretended to be fine. There are benefits to crying. Whether you are one of those people that feels relief after or emptiness at least you aren't feeling wound up like you were before.

Recovery takes a personal drive and effort.

If you accept that there will be moments of war, moments of peace, and moments of revolution in your life then you are already on your way to a better life. Self insight takes self-reflection! You have to do the work to get at what you want to know about yourself.

I am well aware I sound like some kind of cult-like guru here but this is what helped me find some inner peace. I hope it can help you too, reader.