Freefalling

How to turn a day off into an existential crisis in 10 easy steps:

Step 1: Upon waking, identify as many aches and pains as possible. List all the things that you are sad or worried about. Take those woes into the shower with you and encourage them to mushroom into full-on catastrophes.

Step 2: Do not dress well or make an effort with your appearance, remind yourself that you are not worth it, and even if you did it’d be like putting lipstick on a pig.

Step 3: Tell yourself you’re going to do yoga, but instead scroll on your phone for an hour until you are stupefied. This will have the dual effect of wasting your time and feeding you pathetic reels that’ll make you despair for humanity.

Step 4: Promise the dog a good walk, then set up the laptop and pretend to work while in reality just doing more google searches that lead down endless rabbit holes. Drink several cups of coffee and empty the press of all confectionary.

Step 5: Have a good talk with yourself, look at the time, decide to pop to the shops. En-route to local shops decide to go bigger and hit the real shops. Realise you are not well dressed for this outing, have single moment of confidence and whisper to yourself that you can style it out.

Step 6: Arrive in Dundrum, catch sight of yourself in shop window and feel your stomach heave with nausea at your grotesque reflection.

Step 7: Wander around shops with no particular purpose in mind. Remember you have nothing special coming up and no reason to buy nice clothes. Feel moment of relief, followed swiftly by despondency at lack-lustreness of your grim existence. Realise you’re being a selfish brat and that many people are living through horrendous existences right now.

Step 8: Even though the only working compassionate cell in your body is telling you to go home and walk the dog, do not listen to this voice. Instead, plough on through rails and rails of garments while selecting the right mantra. The available choices are: Take your eyes off that dress, you’d look like a right heifer in it / Shorts! You’re actually considering shorts! Have you seen your legs?? / There’s nothing here for an auld one like you have a look for the youngsters instead / Aw, you’re tired are you, why don’t you stop for coffee and a bun – you big heifer!

Step 9: If you have a sufficiently thick skin and haven’t already buckled under this internal persecution, by all means keep going. Turn the focus away from your own awfulness and instead think about the vacuousness of a 3-floor shopping centre filled with people buying stuff. Take note of the plastic doo dahs that are on offer to make your life look instagramable. The expanse of clothing that has been manufactured via child slavery, and which will end up in the bin within the year.

Step 10: Have an epiphany. Clothes aren’t important, stuff isn’t important, it’s people that matter. Remember that most people grind your gears these days. Realise the common theme in all these exchanges is you. You are the problem in the world. You are of no real value, yes the family yada yada, but really they’d be fine without you. Realise you haven’t got the guts to do yourself in. Pray for a fatal and instant accident. Remember you can’t control living or dying. Realise you’re stuck here going through the motions. Know that life changes are possible, but know even more that you haven’t got it in you to tackle personal growth right now. Come over both hot and cold, realise getting back to the car is a gargantuan task. Tell yourself one more time that you’re a waste of oxygen, but this time really mean it. Make it to car, sit there for as long as it takes to work through the cry, scream, compose yourself cycle. You may have to have a few attempts at this before you reach composure.

How to recover in 1 easy step.

Go home to dog who welcomes you like sunshine on a cloudy day. Attempt to get his lead while he almost trips you, weaving between your legs, twirling and tail wagging with frenzied excitement. Go out into the fresh air. Breathe. Don’t overthink, in fact try not to think at all. Put one foot in front of the other. Open your senses to the beauty of the natural world. Have another good deep breath.

There, that’s better.

PS. No need to check in on me, I’m grand. More fresh air and self-care needed, that’s all.