Perception
2/7/26
I contradict myself,
Time and time again without reason.
I suffer through self-inflicted wounds,
And try blaming the season.
I feel so affected by shame and guilt,
But do nothing to reconcile holy perspectives.
I beckoned perception itself to return me to light,
Instead, perception itself begged the question:
“How long until a fatal collapse brings you further from spirit?
This dogma of life without fear can make anyone fear it.”
See you tether yourself to this plane,
But feel idle in motion.
Because life without fear is mistaken for peace,
Until peace ends up broken.
“So forgive me for asking,” says perception, unmasking my blue-colored soul,
“You say that you’re fragile, but turn ashes to castles, brick by brick,
wall to wall…
Yet your eyes look so cold, and your heart loses rhythm;
Turning beauty to stone.
Have you forgotten that life without fear is for those
who stopped dreaming,
For those who don’t roam?
Just give me a chance, and I’ll show you through grace,
That this life is divine…
That there’s greatness in courage,
There’s wisdom in healing, through love and through time.
And if ever you feel that it’s simply not worth it
To tread through the fire,
Surrender your worries, embrace all your fears –
Live your life with desire.“
For the last year or so (sometimes it feels like all my life) I’ve been in a fairly deep and complex battle with depression. This week my sleep cycle and nervous system finally returned to normal.
I hit 16 days with no nicotine and THC; the former I’d kicked years ago before it crept back in around 1/19/25, the latter I’d been in an unhealthy relationship with for about a decade or more.
I felt my body alive again and endorphins pumping with daily exercise for the first time in months. I felt my nervous system begin to regulate with daily meditation and morning rituals standing tall over toxic habits.
It all came with paying close attention to what’s been going into my body between clean food / proper supplements, how I’ve chosen to engage my mind, and how I’ve evolved the curation of my daily schedule.
But today I woke up feeling that depression set in again. The feeling that the foundations were crumbling spread like a plague, and the addiction that exists in my bad habits surfaced yet again. It’s not that I caved to them, it’s that I stayed in bed doom-scrolling for hours, my brain felt foggy again, I couldn’t really put my finger on why.
I tunneled deep into the false reality that the productivity and positivity alike were just part of a ‘pink-cloud’ that was now gone with the wind. From the bed, I called my dearest sister, and she quickly helped stop the spiral, turning it into a moment of learning.
“Just start your day. It’s okay, you messed up, you did things that you already know will start everything off negatively. Do something positive now. Change it.”
So I got up, drank my ‘daily-driver’ (passion fruit, spinach, OJ, collagen peptides, protein, and water), and wrote my first poem of 2026. Sometimes all we need is for someone close to remind us that everything is okay; time is not finite.
It was easy for me to attack my own psyche and forget the simple things that led to my first week of true bliss-through-control in what feels like ages. It would’ve frankly been much easier to take action — to do the things I knew made me feel that sense of simultaneous relief and power.
Recovery is Schrödinger’s cat. The progress and the depression coexist until you choose which one to look at. Today I chose to let the cat roam.
If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate your time. Sharing my thoughts in a public forum is something I meant to do outside of generic social media for a long time. It was a goal from 2025 that I abandoned, largely because I put too much pressure on planning what story to start with. Nothing ever met my standards, and I let the initial spark vanish.
As I write this in the moment, I’ve chosen to embrace the moment, and start with the simple act of actually starting. Today’s entry has taught me volumes about letting go, the perils of perfectionism, and the beauty of action.
With the amount of AI tools I use in my professional career, writing from the heart is one of the few practices that still organically brings me closer to my spirit and allows me to feel whole.
My only hope with what I share on this page now and moving forward is that the raw honesty translates from my mind to yours, through all the peaks and pauses.