Living alone diaries #15; Routines, high blood pressure, being tired of life, and finding happiness again
Its Tuesday today.
I’ve realized that in absence of routines, its very easy for me to fall into an undesirable funk; If my days don’t have some sort of structure, it feels like everything just falls apart, and I’ve noticed this even more because I live alone.
I like to have a plan and a set way (or at least, an idea of how) my day is going to go, if not for the whole day, at least for the mornings and nights. My morning routine is one of those things that make me feel amazing when I go through with it, but is also hard to be consistent with for some reason.
Kind of a paradox, I know.
The routine isn’t anything super intense or special; wake up, brush, drink water, meditate (been getting really good at this lately), journal, then on the days when I’m not going to work, I work out in the mornings, followed by a shower and breakfast. Its easy, simple stuff, but for some reason, it all goes to shit some days.
On days like that (the shit days), I might just wake up and immediately grab my phone and go on twitter, and then I’d just lay in bed, on social media for two hours before I remember I’m a real person and I have to actually get out of bed, on days like these, I don’t have anything to eat till afternoon or evening. And by then I’m feeling hella unmotivated to do anything and the whole day is wasted.
I’ve noticed that when I’m feeling my lowest is when I’m not doing any of my routines and my days are just blending into one another and it feels like I’m just operating on impulse and letting myself go.
I don’t like going on my phone immediately I wake up, because as I said in my last entry, its become so draining for me to be on social media, and doing it first thing in the morning sets a bad precedent for the day.
Going through with my routines help me feel put together and ready to move forward with my day, and it just sets the tone for the whole day.
Anyways, I had one of such good mornings today and I’m grateful for that. I received word that a submission I made will most probably be published soon, so, I’m very happy about that. Also, the person I ghost-write for commended the last few articles I submitted.
My ego is very inflated at the moment.
Good start to the week innit?
Well, this week has definitely been something.
I’m not sure I mentioned it earlier, but I finally went to the hospital to see an ENT, I think the week before last, and I was booked for an appointment on the seventh of September, which was the Wednesday that just passed.
It was eye opening, hm.
The hospital is a bit far from where I live, so I took a very long bus ride there. But before then, at my junction where I was about to enter a keke (motorized tricycle, autorickshaw, whatever you want to call it), there was a lady there who got on with me; we were both going to the bus stop to the hospital. For some reason, she paid for my fare to the stop, and also my whole bus ride to the hospital itself.
For no reason at all.
That made me feel very warm inside, I can’t lie; it was oddly jarring (in a good way) to see that even in the depression that is Nigeria, there are still people who are capable of such small kindnesses. It really touched and inspired me.
Anyways, my appointment was for 7:30 am, and I got there at a reasonable time, thank God.
Though it didn’t really make any difference because we all had to wait anyways.
After about an hour of waiting, they started calling us to come in and see the doctors, but prior to this, they took our vitals.
This was when the nurse told me that my blood pressure was abnormally high and I should be very careful, because if it got just a little bit higher, it would be at a critical stage.
As you can imagine, this was definitely news to me; I’d never had any health issues before, talk less of a scarily high blood pressure level, so I started to panic.
Quietly, of course. It wouldn’t do to lose composure while outside.
I did the first thing that most people do when they’re diagnosed with something or find out that something is wrong with them; went to google. I found out that the nurse was right (I mean, duh); my blood pressure was on stage two of elevation, any higher and they’d have needed to hospitalize me.
That is insane, bro.
As you can imagine, I fell into a black hole of googling and comparative analysis of myself and the symptoms and medical reports I could find.
It didn’t make sense to me why it was so high? And it really still doesn’t.
I’m relatively healthy, I’m eating well (ish), I work out four times a week, I’m not sedentary, I’m not overweight…all the things that they said were causal factors. Really the only thing that made sense was stress.
I’ve known for a while that I get easily stressed out and I sometimes have very high levels of anxiety, but I never really deeped that it could translate into anything as scary as this.
Amidst my silent spiral, I had to also explain my tinnitus to the doctor and be responsive and go get two hearing tests done (which, oddly, my health insurance does not cover, so I had to pay for that), and then get back to the doctor again so he could review my results and give me a prescription.
Basically, after checking my ears to make sure there wasn’t an earwax blockage, the doctor said that he suspects my tinnitus is as a result of my high blood pressure; the arteries in my ear are narrow, so the blood reaching there is pushing against them, which is either creating, or worsening the ringing. He then gave me a prescription of drugs to help increase blood flow to my ears and dilate my blood vessels to reduce the pressure.
I went home and I was so bummed the whole day because it felt like I didn’t have a solution, and I also came back with a disturbing diagnosis.
Anyways, yeah. That’s that on that.
As you can imagine, that just affected my whole week. I felt like crap most of the time and I didn’t feel like eating or getting out of bed or working out.
Sunday rolled around and I was still in this funk; do you ever feel like you’re just drifting along with life? Like your life has no direction or nothing to look forward to, nothing really driving you? That’s how I felt.
It was like I was living in a simulation and I was being made to sleep, wake up, eat, shower, go to work, or lay in bed, use my phone, and rinse and repeat. It felt almost suffocating in a horrible, monotonous way.
In my melancholy and boredom, I decided to explore my phone; I always forget I have tiktok on my phone till I just stumble on it again and use it for a few minutes then leave again. Unlike with others, it’s never really been addictive to me, maybe because I get tired of things like that and social media pretty quickly. Anyways, I went on it and one of the videos on my for you page was like an affirmation video of some sort, it would be close to impossible for me to find that video again now, I’d have linked it here. It basically was a prayer to the universe.
Wait, I just found it again, apparently there’s a “watch history” on your profile for up to 7 days?
I love that.
Anyways, here the video is. It basically said;
“I call back my power and energy from all corners, people, places and situations that have been draining, siphoning, or stealing from me — consciously or subconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally — from all realms, worlds, and directions of time. I am safe, sovereign and protected. So shall it be.”
I’ve always felt like affirmations and stuff like that are cringe and baloney, but for some reason, I really resonated with this one. It came at exactly the right time I needed it, and it brought me a sense of control and comfort over my life again.
It really did feel like I was recalling my energy from wherever it was and whoever I had expended it on. After all, energy can’t be destroyed, only transformed.
So, I decided I was tired of being sad and unproductive and generally a mess, and I got up and made myself write down things I needed to get done.
I cleaned my whole apartment, did dishes, washed the bathroom, and worked out, then went out and got a pretty tasty shawarma, got back and felt a lot better for the rest of the day.
This really just affirmed my belief that you control your emotions, they don’t control you. Sure, they are pretty powerful and can bring you down, but at the end of the day, you can choose how you react to these things. Once I decided I was tired and done with being sad and down and all, and made active and conscious effort to pivot out of that headspace, it did happen, and I felt miles better.
Of course, this is not to say that more intense, medical grade mental health problems like depression, bpd and bipolar disorder are that easy to get around. Those obviously require deeper effort and more time, but one thing I will say, is that as long as you truly want to feel better, and you make active strides, in whatever capacity, to do so, things will get better. No matter what you’re dealing with.
Its Monday right now, and I’m at work writing this.
I’ve decided that the rest of this month I’m going to make active effort not to let myself slip back into that space again; I will allow myself space to think and feel, but I won’t let it weigh me down so substantially like it just did. And I’m going to be as productive, mindful and kind to myself as is realistically possible.
Simply because I deserve it.
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