Moving past the WAW to a stronger me Pt. 4

[Davide]

More journaling:

Today is my first birthday since BD, just about 7 months ago. All of my family is in other parts of the country, and I haven't seen any friends. It is a bit lonely. Normally at least at work people would congratulate me, I know that parents of some students even organized a cake or something. However, I got called for jury duty yesterday and had to go back again today. I was dismissed as a juror around 10:30 in the morning, and so got to head home for a day off since my classes were already covered. I decided to take the dog out for a walk and go to one of my favorite restaurants where it was warm enough to sit on the front patio and have a birthday lunch with the dog. Still, I have gone most of the day without speaking to anyone and it leaves a lot of time to be in my head. Podcasts are a great way to fill up the time but 4 hours of them is more than filling even for me. As long as the weather holds this evening I will go out for a weekly bike ride with some friends and enjoy a beer afterwards. That should help a lot.

Yesterday I had a 2 hour lunch from jury duty so I decided to try to take advantage of the time and go rock climbing at the gym. When I got outside the courthouse I discovered that someone had stolen my rear (red) light from my bike even though it was locked-up not ten feet from the entrance and security guards. Then when I got to the gym I discovered that the problems (routes) that I had been working on for 3 weeks were gone. These were projects that I would visualize myself doing each night before I went to bed, they occupied a lot of my thoughts. They should have been up for another 3 weeks, but the gym reset them for a special competition that evening. I'm not sure if it was the combination of events, my hurry in trying to squeeze in the workout, or stress from my birthday but mentally I just lost it for a moment. I was so furious that I could barely speak, my brain could only focus on the anger to the point that it couldn't work. I didn't explode at the employees or anything like that, but internally I certainly was out of control. It took a few minutes for me to calm down and reframe my mind - what I value about going to the gym is challenging myself physically and mentally and the process of improving, which I can do just as easily on other routes. In the past I would have been content to be resentful that they had changed the routes and ruined the experience for me, a victim mindset. I wouldn't even complain about it, but I would let the resentment fester inside me. But this time I wanted to take control of the narrative and shape it according to my values. It wasn't instantaneous, but I did get there and I enjoyed my limited time there.

Just an hour ago I got a call from an old friend who still lives in South America and was friends with W and I when we were there. It was the first time in a long time that I had to explain that we were no longer together to someone who actually knew us. He was shocked but like most people I know down there completely positive and future-focused "echado para adelante" as they say. Then, I got a sweet text message from SIL sending me a big hug and wishing me much happiness on my birthday. It was genuine and nice, but it still stung a little bit.