Shaken. Obviously.

I don’t even know where to start with this week. It’s been so bored-exciting that I’ve cried, laughed, walked more than my 10,000 daily steps, cleaned out my closet, and somehow ended up here — ten days without nicotine, no Instagram, cutting sugar, and drinking peppermint tea like it’s going to save me.

It’s not going to save me. But here we are.

The weirdest part? My hands. Something is missing in my hands. That vape after every meal was a whole ritual — punctuation, almost. Meal ends, hand reaches. Now the meal ends and my hand just… hovers. Lost. I replaced it with sugar for a minute and now I’m replacing the sugar with water or peppermint tea and honestly my hands still don’t know what to do with themselves. Ten days in and I’m still negotiating with my own fingers.

The boredom is the thing nobody warned me about. Not the cravings exactly — more like boredom turns into anxiety turns into sadness turns into crying in the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago on a Tuesday afternoon. In front of a Magritte. And a Dalí. Earbuds in, listening to Se Regalan Dudas talk about what it means to not be the chosen one, surrounded by paintings that are literally about reality not being what it looks like. I couldn’t have planned that if I tried. The feelings that were being managed suddenly had nowhere to go, so they went there. In public. In front of a surrealist.

So I walk.

Two, three times a day to the park. To the zoo. Nobody asked me to, there’s no app getting credit for it, it’s just me and the wind in my face and something about having to fight through it that makes me feel free. Like my body remembered it was mine.

I wake up at 2am sometimes. Reach for the vape. Remember. Go back to sleep.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. No vape, no Instagram, less sugar, more steps, peppermint tea, wind in my face.

Still here. Hands empty. Feeling everything.

Martini pending.

Graciasss por leerme 🧧

Génesis 🩵❣️