Write about a habit you would like to develop for the new year.
By Rebecca LaMont
Despite everything that has transpired in 2020, I’m surprised to note this past year I’ve had less thoughts and fantasies around my life ending since before enlisting.
Maybe there’s something about being more aware of so many others’ struggles, less alone.
Or that the seemingly constant flow of event-after-event kept the outside world having as much of a magnetic pull than my usual gravitational vortex of an inside.
Maybe there’s something about being so distracted by more than three moves alone, or maybe it’s scooping and scraping every bit of effort to get through a challenging graduate program, all while not seeing the back of anyone’s head, or their hands, or shoes.
Or maybe it’s being unable to find a consistent therapist, requiring me to either wonder why I ever needed a therapist to begin with because boy, I can numb numb numb. Or it’s something about resilience.
Maybe it’s trying to sustain an international relationship.
A little less alone.
Or maybe it’s simply because I got into a habit of going to sleep early when there was no where to be but in my own cocoon, my own sleepy head.
I’ve always loved the night, it gave me life. But the night hasn’t always loved me back and the lives it has given me, has taken equally for a price. But this deal was involuntarily, because of the devil Insomnia.
This past year I found myself slipping into an earlier sleeping routine and my body began to cling onto a rhythm, a rhythm I never offered it before, a rhythm that exposed me to more daylight. And more daylight meant living among the rhythm of the living, and feeling some sort of collective life.
So this year a habit I would like to continually develop and practice is for when external operations slowly open up, I invite the power the sun has as my guide, to keep me tethered among the living, engaged in life, even if it’s a collective distress, that I always personally felt, but now I can slip into an empty bed knowing I am not alone.
