Rising With The Sun

Dear Day 73,

This morning, I awoke bracing myself. I felt my body tense as my eyelids fluttered open, with a drop of my heart saying, “Oh no, I am awake and vulnerable.” What cruel experiences might grace my day? How will I manage my fatigue, my physical weakness, and the pitfalls of my own melancholia? Am I strong enough to survive it all? These questions danced around in my mind as I moved to a seated position on my bed and felt the jaws of resistance close down on me. As I looked around my room and moved to pull back the curtains to reveal the pink clouds left behind by the fading sunrise, I felt the train of my thoughts come to a sudden halt. I realized that this is from the past; these thoughts are old, and so is this feeling. Then it dawned on me, and in harmony with the colours of the sunrise beginning to give way to a beautiful blue sky, I thought: things are different now.   

Sunshine in the forest captured last week. Grateful for the beauty that surrounds me.

Now, even as this realization came over me, and even now as I write this, I’m not quite sure what “different” means. What I do know is this. My mornings have become a pocket of serenity and safety in an otherwise chaotic day. I no longer dread waking up in the morning; I look forward to it. I ask you to suspend judgment for a moment as I go through the motions of what my mornings used to look like. My heart was heavy with pain, my mind thick with self-loathing, self-pity, and a relentless appetite for escape.  

I would jump slightly as my alarm blared out, awakening in a cold sweat to the darkness of my blackout curtains and feeling my skin slip against soiled sheets. The first thing I’d feel is exhaustion encompassing my whole being. My eyelids were heavy, and there was a pulsating, crushing weight through my head. Anxiety would descend over me like a thick blanket, threatening to push my body straight through the floorboards.  I’d chosen the alarm provided by Apple that sounds like an emergency, a sharp BEEP BEEP BEEP that sounds menacing and vicious. That was how I led my life, as if every moment were an emergency. Completely disconnected from moments of quiet, peace, or rest. I needed my alarm to remind me that it was time for the adrenaline to kick in. How else would I make it to work?

Trying my absolute best, usually unsuccessfully, to calm the shakiness in my stiff hands and legs as I dragged my feet into the kitchen, I’d allow dread to enter my very soul. I may have silenced my alarm clock, but alarm bells still rang out through my body. I know now that my mind and body were screaming for help, that the reluctance I felt to get out of bed and participate in the motions of my day had nothing to do with the external forces surrounding me. It had everything to do with the way I led my life, with the poison I ingested into my body each evening, the way I spoke to myself and neglected myself. It was because of me. With considerable effort, I’d grab a dirty coffee mug, spend about three seconds wiping it “clean,” and then start my Keurig. I was going to need a lot of caffeine to make it through my day. 

If I was anything during this time, it was resourceful. Naturally, because I had time to kill, I’d use it to go into the bathroom and throw up. Most days, there wasn’t enough time to get to the toilet, so I’d throw up into the sink. “What’s wrong with me?” I’d wonder, absentmindedly, making a mental note to up the dosage of my vitamins to stave off the nausea. Surely, there was something wrong with my digestion if I had to throw up every morning (spoiler alert: there wasn’t).  Next, I’d spent a few seconds brushing my teeth and then slapping on makeup to conceal the dark circles under my eyes and attempt to brighten the lifelessness within them. 

Then it came time to throw on clothes, chug the black coffee in my still-dirty mug, chug a full bottle of Gatorade and pack two cans of Red Bull into my work bag. I’d grab my keys, open the door, and think, “I just have to get through this day.” I didn’t notice the weather, didn’t hear the crows cawing down by the street, and didn’t take a second to appreciate the life unfolding in front of my eyes. I was hyper-focused on making it to the finish line of my day. Everything in between was moot. 

As a congratulations for making it through a day littered with anger, anxiety, disdain for “sobriety,” and the overwhelm I felt at work, I’d help myself to 2-5 drinks in the evening. I was moderating, after all! Gone were the days of 5-10 drinks at night. I was now a “normal drinker,” the sum of the people I surrounded myself with, and still worse off than most of them. 

It all began in the morning; the morning would start a sequence of events entirely within my control, leading to an inevitable breakdown in the evening. No amount of sleep or rest could eliminate the fatigue that I felt, and nothing could stop the anxiety and dread that swirled in my mind at the beginning of each day. I was doomed. 

Changing seasons remind us that things can always be different

This morning, I woke up as if that was still my life. This was until the birds singing in the trees nearby reminded me that things are different now. When I first embarked on my journey of recovery, sobriety, and restructuring of my life, I began with the morning. As time has gone on, I have fine-tuned my routine. The morning has become a ritual. 

I rise with the sun, oftentimes slightly before it, and I take a deep breath. Gone are the days of reaching immediately for my phone and infecting my mind with immediate dopamine hits and stress that isn’t real (although I’m still working on removing the influence of my phone entirely). I take a deep breath and brew my coffee mindfully. Strangely enough, since quitting drinking, I find that I no longer need to throw up first thing in the morning. It’s been a revelatory experience, being able to stomach a few sips of water without running to the bathroom to eject it. I take my vitamins and medication, wash my face, moisturize, brush my teeth, and sit on the couch. 

Once on the couch, I appreciate the safety of my home. I open Headspace to meditate and then sip my coffee while journaling. The day’s events that will follow my morning don’t matter to me yet because I am cocooned by warmth in my peaceful routine. I allow thoughts to flow through my pen and then select three things I am grateful for and an affirmation for the day. Gratitude and affirmations and all of those things still feel like a foreign, semi-pretentious practice to the parts of myself that are still stuck in melancholia. “Toxic positivity,” I often called it. However, I do these things while simultaneously allowing myself to feel whatever I need to feel in the moment. I can still be sad, tired, angry, or experience any emotion under the sun, but I must also be grateful. How blessed I am to have running water to drink, to enjoy modern comforts such as heating and electricity, to have a damn roof over my head? How lucky am I to have lungs that still breathe, a mind that thinks, and a body that still works despite all the times I tried to kill it slowly just to prove I would be missed? Gratitude is a must. It is brand new for me. It’s a new, non-negotiable element of my morning. I find that gratitude allows some of the weight to lift off me even when I struggle to come up with three things I truly feel grateful for. I feel less and less like a victim and, interestingly enough, more and more worthy of good. “Gratitude is the antidote to self-pity,” I heard this in a meeting the other day. I clung to it. After my gratitude selection, I read a bit and begin my day.

I spend my morning appreciating stillness, peace, and presence. I spend it fuelling my body with gratitude and powerful insights about life’s purpose and meaning. I give myself the space to be authentically myself, to care for and love myself by washing my face and brushing my teeth in silence. I have all day to rush. There’s no need to rush first thing in the morning. This ritual has changed the game for me. In the absence of a morning routine that requires me to pull back the curtains, I am left stumbling around in the darkness for all of my waking hours. I make no apologies for not using this time to “hustle” or “grind” because, again, I have all day to do those things. The morning is for me. 

I used to dread my mornings, but now they’ve become little pockets of peace. I look forward to waking up now. It’s all about how I start my day. I implore everyone to look at their routines, beginning with the morning, and take inventory of them. Rituals matter; how you wake up matters. If there’s anything I know for sure right now, it is this. 

Love,

Charlotte