Here’s the thing: when you’ve been bumbling through a series of shitty romantic situations and smoking weed every night to deal with it, you’ve basically made a hobby of the experience. It’s like a really crappy passion project that’s taken up loads of time. Now that it’s gone, life is being restructured into something entirely different.
The funny thing about really bad romantic experiences is that they have a special way of making you feel so absolutely meaningless as a person. Like you sort of become an emotional punching bag for whatever discontent the other person harbors about their life, the world. None of the guys were abusive per se, but they were definitely emotionally avoidant and subtly very dismissive. This completely dysregulated my nervous system, and made me feel like spooked horses were running up and down my spine at all hours.
It’s weird to feel the world, to feel life open up now that the toxicity is starting to fade into the background. Quitting weed is another wrench to throw into the recovery process because it’s its own can of worms. I’ve been lurking a ton on r/leaves and people talk about a range of emotional responses they experience while quitting. For example anxiety peaks, you have trouble sleeping, you experience bouts of depression. I’ve been taking a ton of supplements, and avocado, for whatever reason, seems to be doing a great job of mitigating the symptoms. But it’s still not the cleanest split from a crappy headspace into a healthy and whole one.
I’m slowly reacquainting myself with my old hobbies and recently started a new anime series that I spend 1-2 hours watching each night (Chainsaw Man, anyone?), I’m back to focusing on my health and fitness (dude, weed is so gross on the body), and I’m gently ramping up to moving the needle in my career, and playing around with new creative skills. Everything is a process and not much has been built, but it’s nice to feel the energy of my life flow back towards me.
a soft death 