Forget
2026-01-07
Yesterday, I collapsed.
I remember that after lunch, I took a nap and was just so upset at how tired I've been. I've been making progress with my CPAP. I'll put it on and can fall asleep with it, but can't keep the mask on throughout the night. I'll still wake up from apnea episodes and have to throw my mask onto the ground. I'll keep it on for about two to three hours, but still don't feel a lot of the positive effects of it throughout the day. I still feel tired. I still feel leveraged beyond what's healthy. I took my blood pressure yesterday after my nap and got a reading of 155/100 with a heart rate of 115. My blood sugar was over 200. It felt as if no matter what progress I made or how hard I tried, it wasn't going to be enough.
This made me have a nervous breakdown. I was pacing around my room, biting myself and hitting myself. I had thoughts of relapse. All I wanted to do was get away from it all, from my own body. My weakness and incompetence were going to lead me to an inevitable hell. I was sure of it. Amid this spiral, I somehow mustered the wherewithal to get my gym bag ready and go to the gym. Somehow, I was still able to maintain my ritual.
I went to the gym, but cut my walk down to twenty-five minutes. I sat in the hot tub and tried to relax. With the new year, the spa area was more crowded than usual. I found my spot, sat in the hot tub, and tried to tell myself that I was okay, that I was doing the right things. I went to the shower and stood under the cold water, which always gives my nervous system a hard reset and calms me down. I cycled between the shower and the hot tub. It felt nice. I left the gym feeling more relaxed, but even as I'm writing today's entry, I still feel myself slipping.
A hard lesson I've had to learn in life is that no matter how hard you work towards something, there are no guarantees. You can still fail, even if you give something your best effort. It's something that people don't like to talk about. Most stories we tell are centered around a person getting what they want and having that change them in some meaningful way, positive or negative. Rarely do we tell stories about failing to do that. The story always revolves around the winner, the successful one.
This is a harsh reality of life. Most people deal with it, yet the only way we approach dealing with it is through aphoristic perseverance. "Fall down seven times, get back up eight," the story usually goes. Unfortunately, we can't always get back up. That's not due to a lack of perseverance, but a lack of opportunity. We can do what we can to pursue an opportunity but if we fail, the opportunity won't always stay there. It'll go away eventually if we don't succeed, and then we are left with one of the truest expressions of human pain.
Grief.
No one talks about how to deal with it.
The only way to deal with it, really, is to let it die. The further that failed pursuits go towards the past, the easier it is to let that pain dull. It dulls because we forget about it. Maybe that's why forgetting is such a good thing. Sure, we can forget good things and that's horrible, but we also have the chance to forget about pain. In many ways, to forget is to heal. I've been there many times, trying to forget about myself in the past. All those memories do is bring up the failed opportunities, things I'll never get back. For me, grief seems to be the dictator of my past. It signs decrees I don't get to see.
The only way to get past it is to forget.
What's the best way to forget? Focus on today.
Yesterday, I let grief dictate my emotions. Today, I have the chance to forget and move on.
I don't want to persevere anymore. I want to forget.