Transformation
When COVID first hit and we were all told to shelter in place for two weeks – longest two weeks of our lives, amiright, people?! – I remember a cute meme circulating about “two weeks of isolation, huh? – either I’ll come out 20 pounds lighter with all my chakras aligned or 20 pounds heavier with a drinking problem.” It was funny at the time. Less so now.
My story, I am positive, is not unique. I actually went both directions. For the first year, I overworked, overdrank, overate, and who really cared because I was wearing nothing but elastic-waisted pajama pants anyway. I, like many people I’ve heard from, had multiple breakdowns during the ensuing year, as isolation tends to instigate in even the most introverted of us. Playing an extremely boring existence of work, drink, sleep, repeat on nauseating loop would break the sanest of minds, and I don’t pretend mine was all that sound to begin with.
But this story turns, I promise. A little more than a year and a half into this toxic relationship with myself, after making myself sick on every possible level, I got, well, sick of myself and decided something needed to change. I joined a weight-loss clinic, learned how to eat healthy, cut the booze intake in half and then in half again, started to work out and even to meditate.
These are not changes I made all at once or overnight. These were not decisions I made, snapped my fingers, and the healthier me suddenly appeared like magic. Backsliding happens in every journey, and some backslides feel more like landslides, eclipsing the entire face of the mountain you’ve just kicked your own ass to climb. But you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and just get back to climbing. Because the alternative, of course, is to sit there in the rubble and feel sorry for yourself.
So here I come, out from under the wreckage, now that our “two weeks” of isolation feels as though it might finally be over, 30 pounds lighter, healthier, stronger, and with my chakras more or less in alignment, at least sometimes.
