I like to imagine this whole exercise of healing, mending of the heart or whatever fancy term feels right in the moment, as a game of Tetris. It's repetitive and a never ending routine. Silly as it may sound, there's something deeply philosophical about those falling jagged pieces and the exercise of making sure everything falls in right place and in right order... Much like life. Scientifically, people who play Tetris for a prolonged amount of time find themselves thinking about ways different shapes in the real world can fit together, such as the boxes on a supermarket shelf, the buildings on a street, or hallucinating pieces being generated and falling into place on an invisible layout. It's called the Tetris Effect. And it astounds me how this is helping me come to terms with myself. Bottom line, and to put it pretentiously, i am manipulating myself on an evolutionary level, ultimately engaging in ritualized tidying up of my feelings, thus helping me move on.
God. It feels so damn good already.
As hated and loathed it is, routine is what kept my head on my shoulders. There is definitely something about almost devout, psychotic maintenance of a daily routine. It's not just about getting up to go to work and coming back to fall in bed, it has to be all consuming. Make sacrifices to stick to it, even if it requires you to deny yourself comfort. Overt acts of self care - eating proper, exercise and sleeping well - demand an effort. When you are falling apart, make this hard choice - suffer the pain of heartbreak and loneliness, or suffer the pain of a routine. Either way, there will be suffering, but what gets you out of this in one piece is routine. It took me tears and aches and pain, few hunger pangs and loads of caffeine withdrawal to realise that by forcing my body to comply, I am twisting my feelings into shape - into something that I can live with and accept.
This didn't happen overnight, it took it's own course. I had my share of bedtime tears, texting habits that reached a new low and a steady, silent annihilation of my lower than average self esteem on a daily basis - but, I woke up at 6 am without pressing snooze a thousand times, I went for a run that morning and cooked myself dinner that night. I finished three books in two weeks and on one weekend, I sorted my clutter and finally finished my painting. I lost kilos over weeks, developed calve muscles that I was complimented on more than my face on a normal day and craved fruit instead of coffee. Actual fucking fruit.
But it made me tired. The cost of pushing yourself is that the exhaustion is real. Couple that with obsessive feelings of heartbreak, i believe that's what self flagellation must feel like, or a bad sunburn of your own doing. And because this is your doing is what makes it harder. There were days when I ached to just come back home, take a cold shower, fall in my soft bed naked and be hugged to sleep. Such were my fantasies. But I slept alone. And that undid me a few good times. But always remember the next day... The next day needs to be good. No matter how shitty you feel, at the end of the day tell yourself that you did good. I slipped a few times, yes. I skipped meals and I let myself fall face first into boxed junk food (read - butter chicken pizza) with nihilistic abandon. I gave up on my runs halfway and I chose to google random stuff rather than bedtime reading. But the next day I made sure to pull myself together and do what needed to be done for no reason other than that it needs to be done. Give yourself zero alternatives.
It felt pointless at times. Exhausting yourself to sleep doesn't suppress those feelings from rearing their ugly head at 3 am. The runner's high doesn't make you not miss the person or crave their company, or stop you from sending just a tiny desperate 'hey' on WhatsApp. It won't stop the pain or slow it down. But it makes you deal with it. And that's the whole idea. I don't want to stop it. I want to deal with it. I made peace with it. I felt in control of other circumstances in my life enough to confidently acknowledge that these feelings are now beyond my circle of control, and I cannot allow them back in. In a way, I felt courageous, at peace and going along with my tendency to be forever pretentious, a tad bit wiser.
Someone wise has said that the best way to deal with feelings of abandonment and heartbreak is to let it hurt. As nihilistic as it may sound, I probably would never have done this had I not believed in this little sentence. Sometimes healing isn't all about staying in a bubble, away from everything that can hurt you. Sometimes you need to shove yourself face first into what hurts the most. I am in a much better place than where I was and this fact is a constant reminder, even a motivating factor that makes me continue my boot camp like regimen. I have even come to like it. I look forward to mornings, the first cup of tea with crunchy toast at 8 am, bedtime readings and that occasional noontime YouTube zumba on weekends - things that I never did because I never could wake up before 9, never ate breakfast and fiddled with my smartphone each night till 2. I read more and learned more.
Mr. Murakami once said, "When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity."
I think it was all worth it.
