Better Than Ever
Welcome to Cicatrix Galore: A multi-disciplinary, exploratory newsletter investigating human dynamics, consciousness, culture, and recovery.
Last week, I had what felt like a relatively transcendent thought, which at present lends itself to the purposes of our introduction:
Life isn’t entirely about brushing your teeth.
Don’t get me wrong, a routine can certainly be, and so often is, at the center of a healthy life. Dental hygiene is a lovely and important thing. Simultaneously, it is not—as a notion of self-care, culture’s newest god—and never will be, the substance of life.
My mother is a woman of rigorously unsettling discipline. My father is a man of experimentation and indulgence. I, their nonsense now-adult only child, have discovered two things to be convergent and true of being a person, who also happens to be in early sobriety:
1) The structure of routine, even a healthy one, can be dangerously narrowing to the necessity of our lives in flux.
2) Fear of the unknown; of what may fall apart or invite harm or cause discomfort by breaking routine despite appearing better than ever; is not at all the point of being alive. (Or sober.)
For as long as memory serves, I have regarded my ability or inability to maintain routine a character flaw. A matter of integrity that I fundamentally lacked a consistent appreciation for. I have made a discovery, by way of absolute shock at the degree of still delusion newly perceptible to me in my sober life:
This belief structure, of routine as integrity, is an unnecessary prison of self-punishment. It is a small yet tangible relic of last year’s much more palpably dysphoric me.
Most importantly, here’s what I had realized: I have allowed the time at which I must brush my teeth (and thusly go to bed) to keep me from writing when I feel the itch, or reading when I know my spirit needs it. These are the things that nourish me above all else—the cart cannot be put before the horse—and yet I’ve found myself doing just that, in a Machiavellian internal argument about good behavior that I never seem to win.
The problem, ultimately, is the must, I think. Crucially, the fear of punishment, of death and disease, of loss or fallout, is never a sustainable enough motivator. At least, it certainly hasn’t been for me. The satisfaction—the sheer chemical rush of fulfillment—in listening to my body amidst the process of attunement, before relying on routine, has been a refreshing one.
Turns out, it’s since easier to brush my teeth without culling resentment toward the basic silly human shit we have to do to stay alive. I sleep better. I am open to the seasons of life rather than ensuring I am barricaded for the storms.
I believe this to be the quintessential felt-difference between the feeling of routine and ritual.
The ubiquitously antithetical messaging we receive on healthy behavior in the course of our lives is daunting at best and damaging at honest baseline. One does not even need to be disparaging about it, we’ve already outdone ourselves.
The true, curious fluidity, required for individuals to function as the holistic system we humans are, cannot be understated.
Yet, it only ever is.
So, cheers to us. Little joys, healed scars, lessons, discoveries, and revelations—they all matter and we get to cherish them. In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing my unfolding journey of turning inward, keeping my decade of research on the human condition in tow along the way.