A little perspective on change.

Personal thoughts on change.

Trigger Warning: it is not graphically described, but intense, personal and traumatic events are discussed here.

if you don’t like battered, bloody imagery, then for your own piece of mind, stay away from this little story. No harm, no foul, no offense taken! I wish you the best, and that you’re able to find an author here that suits you.

Also, as I don’t have an established audience here yet…well, consider this a dive into the deep end. I will not mince words, but if you can stomach someone talking through traumatic experiences, then it’s nice to meet you. I’m Alex. I go by the moniker “Trappmastuh” online, as a homage to a friend that’s since passed.

All of that said and aside, here we go!

As I’m sitting here alone in a room, listening to some good music while the wind is messing with wind chimes outside on this semi sunny, yet mostly overcast day-a realization dawns on me.

I’m going to be 33 in a few weeks.

The realization of my biological clock ticking forward by one year always used to bring me a sense of dread, but now?

For some reason, I no longer fear it.

Something’s changed fundamentally within me.

My age is just a number to me now, and not indicative of anything more than the years I’ve been alive. It has lost the fear it once had so deeply attached to it, and now is a statement of fact, as opposed to a looming psychological weight that if left unchecked, would start to strangle my mental state.

Maybe it’s all of the physical work I’ve been doing, maybe it’s the fact I’ve been too busy to even think of it much lately.

Or…here’s where my rather rambling narrative comes into play. (It seems to be a little idiosyncratic at least compared to my nuclear family, but it is not by any means unique.)

Maybe it’s the fact that in addition to the above, I’ve been paying attention to what I really want to do now. Examples:

I gave up people pleasing. I stopped caring too much and giving too much of myself away in a desperate attempt to gain favor.

I took my life seriously for once, instead of meandering through it like so many zombies I see at work, out in the day to day, or let alone online.

I’m under nobody’s thumb anymore, despite being so for the last few years, out of sheer necessity. I’ve grown out of that need.

-Here's some context for this little ramble-

I had several of the hardest years of my life from the tail end of 2022 to present day.

What was the motif in those years, you may ask?

If I was to give it one singular word: Change.

What comforts I knew before 2022 were put through a shredder, and my body was left, quite literally, beaten, broken, and bloodied in a pile on a nondescript cement floor after an accident that changed my life’s trajectory right after Thanksgiving.

Everything that I knew about my life was upended.

Violently.

In all ways that mattered to me at the time.

In the aftermath of this, several things happened:

I no longer had a job I loved, I no longer had money or any viable source of income, I couldn’t trust my own judgement,I no longer had access to my own support network I had taken great pains to create, and I no longer knew my surroundings as I was forcibly transported away to a foreign environment. I didn’t even have access to the internet for a long while.

As much as I hurt, as much as it was the darkest period in my life I’ve ever faced…one thing started to become clear the more I accepted what had happened.

And that was this simple, indisputable, undeniable fact; it happened.

I couldn’t ever go back and rewrite the timeline, I wasn’t able to stand there and look at myself in the mirror and say that nothing serious happened, I was not able to deflect, dismiss, or to subjugate or sublimate the reality that had me by the throat.

So…I had no other option.

I made do with what I had, and forced myself to allow the change in.

There are certain aspects of my physiology, down to my genetics, that resist “change” almost violently, but I had no other choice. Certain diagnoses confirmed this several times over, and help to explain the rather steep learning curve when it comes to environment changing and adaptability.

(If you’re aware of what I’m hinting at, good on you. I will not go any further into that at this time. Instead, I’m going to give light to the bigger issue that was in play--)

Which lead me to Step 1.

Certain mental illnesses that were in large part the root cause of the explosive event that caused this change were in my case genetic, and untreated for 31 years up until that point.

I had to get used to a changed definition of normal. Proper medication was now something that was cemented in stone, lest I ever wanted to revisit the darkest night of my life.

Then came the healing.

Steps 2-5.

Lots of therapy. Both counselor wise and physically post accident.

As perhaps the one habit I retained from my previous life, activity still remained a bastion against the worst of what my sickness gave me, and it will be a part of my day to day until I keel over.

If I don’t exercise at least 4- 5 times a week if I’m not dead tired or sick, I will feel off. This could mean something as simple as walking down the block, to cranking out a 10 mile bike ride in less than an hour.

I give these multiple steps because of the nature of progress. It is NOT linear. Some days you are on fire, others you’re feeling like a deflated ballon in a rainstorm that just got run over by an 18 wheeler. Twice.

If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that change is like that.

It is or can be extremely uncomfortable, and resisting it only makes it worse. A comparison would be like getting your leg stuck in some mud, and violently thrashing about will only make you tired while not improving your situation at all. The key in either situation is to remain calm, and flow with the situation.

Step 6.

A few months ago, something in my mind finally snapped. This is what I call the surrendering stage of change. This is just my idea of it, and how I relate to the process, so don’t take this as gospel.

I stopped resisting the change that was washing over me on the daily.

I let it happen, without judgment. I can thank meditative practices for giving me the basic idea, but what had not happened yet was me actively applying it. I’ve always maintained a barrier between the mind space and my emotional center, due to some trauma in relationships and being a doormat for people when I let my guard down, especially in a romantic sense. For nerdy former academics like me especially, we have the ability to separate ourselves entirely from the emotional capabilities that fuel us for the sake of turning our brains into little computers to crunch data, which is useful, but only to a given extent. We are weird little biological organisms, not robots.

So…what then was next? I was aware something needed to change, had taken steps to mitigate some of my resistance to that nebulous and ever changing concept, so…I was at an impasse.

Step 7.

Whatever you want to call it, be it the brain, consciousness, Higher Self, Spirit, God, whatever (I will likely write about that subject later) the voice in my head that narrates my day to day, in a Jungian sense, the “I”, said it was time to start figuratively leading with that thing that pumps blood everywhere inside the body. Meaning, on a more psychological level, it was time to bridge that gap between the mind and the emotional center. And to not half ass it. It was all or nothing.

This…was step 7. The ideological change.

And all it took was an initial jump to get the ball rolling again.

It did not magically just come out of nowhere, it took concerted effort, therapy, and lots of nights staring at the ceiling wondering about me and my life to get to this point, and honestly?

It's terrifying to people who are sensitive like I am. I still am terrified, given my naivete, that someone is going to steam roll me and cause more pain than I want to experience, especially when it comes to romance and relationships.

But.

All I’ve gone through has given me a mind that’s stronger and resilient, a body that’s better and more fit, a heart that’s opening, and a sense of belonging both within myself and to the people I chose to associate with that would have n e v e r existed without my worst day.

I wouldn’t be thriving and loving life on a personal level like I am.

I wouldn’t be succeeding at work, even if its just going to be a job I work to remain stable and financially salient, not something I see myself doing the rest of my life.

I wouldn’t be able to hold myself to a higher standard in whatever it is I do.

I wouldn’t be exploring aspects of myself that I had suppressed for decades due to being damaged.

All of this happened due to me allowing change to envelop me fully.

I could give you the cliched version of “becoming a butterfly after its transformation”, but those to me are hackneyed.

And mind you, this is no romanticization of trauma. I hope I made it absolutely clear that what matters is how you react to the fucked up situations that happen to you, and am not in any way shape or form trying to say that it makes you a stronger person.

No.

YOU make YOU a stronger person. Not the trauma.

For me…the best comparison I can make off the top of my head is…walking into a car dealership and realizing you can choose whatever car you want to drive, free of charge, but maintenance of that lies solely with you.

The car, in a sense, is a convoluted metaphor for change.

The maintenance then is what you do to maintain yourself during those periods. There could be gradual change, or in my case, dramatic change.

Once the keys are handed over, and it’s in your name, responsibility is solely on your shoulders to keep it well maintained.

Once you commit to a car, you will be challenged. Life’s roads will be bumpy, some broken and full of potholes, others inaccessible to you, others only at certain times, others will lead nowhere, some will leave you stranded, others will stick you in a cyclical roundabout until *you* decide when it’s time to exit.

Change ultimately is the vehicle to different versions of you. Some can be better, some can be worse. It’s all on you.

Nobody inhabits the body you do but you.

Nobody has the ability to change your life but you.

So…which car are you gonna choose?