Recap #2020ByPri

TW:

It’s been 10 months and somehow it still just doesn’t feel normal. The pandemic has been cruel to everyone, taking the world into a whirlwind that we would’ve never expected in our wildest nightmares, and this social isolation has caused many of us to slow down and do some introspection.

Despite it all, somehow the pandemic has also forced me to learn a lot of who I am and grow.

COVID forced me to heavily heal and learn a lot of who I am outside of my trauma. Granted this pandemic is a rollercoaster of an experience for everyone, I think it began to work backwards for me in some ways and threw a lot of personal growth my way. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had more off days than I can count but in the end, I can’t believe it took a global pandemic for me to heal and face a lot of truths that I had put aside. Although I don’t really talk about it, I have been forced to face a lot of my demons and that’s the biggest difference between my growth in the past versus during the pandemic. I’m not saying the pandemic is over either, but I started writing this piece back on the two year anniversary after I experienced what “No Does Mot Mean Convince Me” alluded to. It’s a piece I wrote about my experience with sexual assault and there has been a lot of subconscious realizations since leaving college. It was also suicide prevention awareness month when I started article, so this weird, raw emotion also comes with a little bit of a bittersweet feeling. It’s incredible to see so many people spread awareness and love others, but that combined with being quarantined in my childhood bedroom comes with some memories. Above that, it was a heavy reminder that it‘ll be almost 5 years since I’ve self harmed and how I never knew I’d live to see my twenties. They’re milestones in my life that I never even thought about until social isolation hit. And all of this makes me feel incredibly proud to have made it this far.

Healing throughout COVID for me meant facing my innermost thoughts alone in my childhood bedroom, the same bright purple walls for months at a time which brought back the memories of my childhood pain and the lack of emotional support while growing up in a brown family. My family has always been incredibly supportive but the concept of mental health wasn't well understood before everything was thrown my way. It was hard to go through feelings and emotions without having an outlet. The reminder of living at home definitely took me back to a place that was uncomfortable. However, that meant I had to come face to face with my inner demons. In isolation, I really had time to really hone down on myself and not have the ability to dismiss feelings or take them in a physically/mentally harmful way. The biggest difference from healing now versus my depression from years past was the fact that I was so exhausted from feeling that way for the past decade of my life. I hit my lowest last winter and after all these years of refusing professional help, I had turned to a trusted mentor for guidance and therapy in a way. She helped me reaffirm my emotions. I initially thought I was ludicrous for thinking and feeling the way I did all these years, but she reminded me that these emotions were valid and normal.

Therapy in a way was a time of reform, a time to reinvent myself. The one hour every week, just for a couple of months, really helped me sort out a lot of internal, pent-up struggles that I had previously chosen to overlook. She backed up my past emotions and reactions with a lot of facts relating to neuroscience, which helped me grasp so many ideas and explanations of my baggage and post traumatic growth. With everything I had been through, one bad thing after another, I had started to assure myself that there had to be something wrong with me. For years, I had blamed myself because I was the common denominator. That was probably the hardest part of it all, thinking you were the reason for all the bad happening to you and the people around you. It made me feel worthless. However, with help, I got a perspective that I had never allowed myself to even think of. She affirmed to me that I wasn’t the reason for it all. To internalize that I wasn’t the source of blame was revolutionary in the way that I held my past. The reassurance went past the meaningless, redundant mantras, and instead dove deeper into my initial bad memories to give me genuine explanations. They were able to somehow sit with me in a way that was so profound that I started to internalize it and genuinely believe that I was never asking for any of it.

So with that, every bit of my memories, emotions since childhood, and every random rant in my notes app, I took the initial months of COVID to truly take control of my healing by the balls and pave away at the path of my post traumatic growth. For me, taking control of my anxiety and healing meant to dabble into things I never had tried. What worked for me was a mere result of trial and error from lots of initial research. Going through copious coping mechanisms was the only way I found what worked for me, but behind each of these, was a scientific explanation which helped me understand why these simple things gave me some newfound sense of peace.

I mapped out three general areas of focus I needed to work on, daily life tasks like adjusting my sleep and meals to a consistent, healthier pattern, getting a better grasp of my anxiety, and lastly, not getting over but rather accepting the trauma that was caused by my perpetrators.

My anxiety and sleep/eating patterns circled around each other in the sense that one would cause the other and going about day to day tasks would be draining. I would skip meals, sleep at 4am and have crippling anxiety attacks that would suffocate me for hours of my day no matter where I was. Getting over this meant really focusing on one issue at a time and making small steps to get a better grasp on these issues. It started with small things like breathing techniques, then worked my way up to tying each of my five senses to specific things that made me feel good and those had deeper memories attached to things that made me feel good. Once, I was so adamant about finding that sense of calmness, I went through 30+ different scents and oils and picked out the two that brought me some kind of initial comfort. For me, those were lemon and orange tones and from there, I incorporated them into different calming aspects of my life, like mixing it into black (my fav color) play dough (almost like a diy stress ball) to help release anxiety. Another tactic that I came across happened to be a Navy SEAL breathing technique (super fucking random, I know) called Boxed Breathing. These would allow me to make connections between certain physical actions/senses and work towards feeling grounded again. I started to use these coping mechanisms more often when I felt anxiety. Super slowly, I started to regain control of my inner peace and I felt like I was able to finally find better ways to deal with my trauma and anxiety, and although I didn’t notice it immediately, the constant numb feeling became more and more distant.

As for my eating habits, I knew I needed to incorporate some kind of workout to motivate me to feel better. Although I hated the typical idea of fitness, I also knew it was the only way to put better nutrients into my body and on a more routine basis. I did my research and spoke to friends to find a routine I wouldn’t dread— for me that meant quick 30 minute workouts because I get distracted easily, something that didn’t require weights or a gym, because I’m super inexperienced and self conscious. All of these habits cycled into each other to help give me some stability which led to a huge flip in my quality of life.

Honestly, my sleep changes came into my life during this pandemic, because I was terrified of being alone with my thoughts for so long at night and felt trapped in my room. Soon, it was fueled by the quarantine boredom and the aftermath of working out. I slowly stopped sleeping at 4am and worked my way up to 1-2am nights but of course that wasn’t enough if I wanted to get to a happy medium. Melatonin was heavily recommended to me but I had a past bad memories associated with it, so getting to the point of even considering trying it again took months of reassurance, research and fact checking.This included talking to my doctor to make sure the hormones of this with my birth control wouldn’t have effects, then trying half tablets for a couple of days with my mom. All of these seemingly “baby steps” might have taken me months to build up to but in the end, completely flipped my 4 hour, late night sleep schedule of the past eight years.

So as this year comes to an end, I wanted this piece to reflect on some weird but much needed growth this past year. I stopped posting on The Priya Project since the 2 year anniversary because as I began my first, real world, post grad job. I wasn’t sure who I would be without the support and advocacy of my college communities, and those who pushed for sexual violence awareness as well. We all have done our own growing in ways we may have not realized but it is just as important to recognize those small steps we take to better ourselves. What I learned this year was that when things seem impossible, life feels hopeless, and the world begins to spiral too, never be afraid to ask for help. Having someone in my life that gave me their unbiased point of view with deeper explanations behind it all, helped me look at things from an incredibly different perspective. As the new year comes along, 2021 (FINALLY and thank fucking god), I hope that you too, are able to reflect on your own progress and continue to grow as this year comes our way.

lots of luvvvv and happy new year!! <3

- Priya