How I have come to hate the idea of "Day 1" - whether it be Day 1 of a diet, a study programme, an exercise regime or some needed psychological/spiritual sprucing up work. Now, I would love nothing more than to be able to say it's because of what Hollywood has made it...but in actual fact Hollywood has just helped us to visualise our innermost desire when it comes to big change. See, the recognition is still there...the penny still drops...that painful moment where we have to face whatever demons hide inside and recognise them for what they are. This moment is so powerful that we cannot stay the same, we have to start moving in some direction, whether it be up or down.
This, of course, is where Hollywood and our deepest desire comes in - yes, we want and need the moment of truly seeing the things holding us back in fluorescent light. The shock, the horror, the disappointment, or whatever emotion your demons awake within you. But then we get the hard fade to black with fitting powerful musical sting, only to fade into the new you already comfortably living more than the you you imagined for yourself. Or maybe a pan down to something like your shoes running (emotive music a given, of course) and a pan back up to the new and improved you - that way there is at least a hint at the work that had to go into you. Perhaps it might even be as elaborate as a fast-paced move through the next few months/years, with us watching as you change - almost like one of those flowers shot over time and then sped up in viewing to get to the blossoming quicker. Point: all the hard work happens, without you having to sweat through every second.
O, how wonderful that would be! But instead, in the real world I live in, deciding it's "Day 1" does nothing of the above - it just makes you more painfully aware of the 86400 seconds that the day is filled with. Seconds that count up to so much time, and yet feel like the blink of an eye when you start to think of all the things that need to happen for you to get from where you are now to where you need to get to. And of course that goal can feel so unreachable that it might just be better to crawl up into a ball on the bed until the world doesn't notice that it's passing you by. Because tomorrow and the day after that contain even more thousands of seconds in which you can fail - you've pictured all the possible scenarios already from every angle.
And so "Day 1" comes...and goes...and comes again...and stomps out...
Standing on the eve of another "Day 1" is scarier than any scary horror movie I have ever experienced - for I stand here knowing without a doubt that it is only myself I am hurting...poisoning...and then as a reaction to people and events that are not worth any response...never mind my self-destruction. I wish my poison of choice had rather been drugs or alcohol - at least then you always stay skinny. But my addiction makes me grab anything I can and stuff my face with it. And so now it's even more impossible to hide my problem...my illness...for here I largely stand...
It - I - cannot stay the same! In anyway, if we're honest - then staying the same is just another way of saying you're going down without fighting. Yet the idea of all that has to happen - second to second, minute to minute, hour to hour - overwhelms me, sticks in my throat and makes it hard to swallow...hard to speak...hard to lift a finger...and then I start to drown again...
And yet, staying here surely isn't safe. It's definitely not wonderful. And so I will step into "Day 1" and try to take it second by excruciating second. And see where each one of those seconds take me. Wish me luck. Better yet, join me. And always remember to breathe...
