Transition

I can only faintly remember those 2–3 weeks.
At first, nothing really happened.

Just the usual, repetitive daily script — and then, over time...
as if the automatic reaction patterns had started to fade.

It’s hard to put into words.
It’s still there — like an entity desperately clinging to you.
But somehow, you no longer give it that much importance,
because at times, the sense of acceptance begins to appear.
At least, a faint spark of it.

Yet on the surface, nothing seems to have changed — in fact...
Sometimes it strikes back with even greater force,
as if trying to remind you that it’s still there, that you’ll never escape it.
And yet, somewhere in your brain,
a safety-generating function switches on.

And that’s exactly what begins to carve out a crack in the vicious cycle.

Then one day simply arrived — a day that felt completely different.
from the circus that had been playing out for the past six months.
At that very moment, I felt I had arrived somewhere.

It truly feels as if it’s retreating into the background.
A thin, invisible veil begins to separate you,
softening the intensity of everything.
You start — hesitantly at first —
to feel more stable in the places where your comfort zone once held you captive.

As if I suddenly remembered
that there was a switch I could use to turn off this feeling at any time.
And when that happened,
a current appeared — one that wouldn’t let my attackers take over.
(At least, for a while.)

Of course, it happened gradually,
day by day, week by week.
My ego eventually quieted down and accepted that it was over.

That’s it — I thought

I had every reason to be happy.
My knee was functioning well,
and my anxiety had almost completely faded within a month.
What once seemed unimaginable
suddenly returned to my life — in its full presence.

Not only did it return,
but it also brought new shades to that entire period.
I felt stronger, more resilient.

And of course —
because the backpack that had once been filled with bricks
suddenly emptied in one swift motion,
and I could finally do everything without the heavy weight
that used to press me down halfway.

As spring arrived,
I, too, began to blossom with it.
Everything happened so quickly
that I could barely comprehend it.
Perhaps... a little too quickly

A few weeks later, a different kind of feeling began to surface —
one that I could perhaps compare to guilt.

"My lightheartedness isn’t justified."
That’s what it said.

After all, I owed all this to the medication —
the very one whose mere thought had made me nauseous just a few months earlier.

Either way, the sense of liberation made me forget its price.

Eventually, disappointment in myself began to break through more and more often,
until I finally decided to put an end to the treatment.

I thought: Okay... I can live without anxiety.
I remember how.
I can do it without the pills.

Of course, my doctor disagreed.
He advised me to wait longer,
but my then fiery, restless self wasn’t having it.

I refused to keep poisoning my body any longer —
and besides, I couldn’t even drink alcohol with it,
which at the time was one of the cornerstones
of my cheerful weekends (and, quite often, weekdays).

I had to get ready for summer...

Pretty ridiculous contradiction, isn’t it?

Sometimes I feel like my ten-years-ago self
was the protagonist of a tragicomedy.

Anyway — yes, it meant that much to me,
enough to make sacrifices for it.

That’s where I was back then.

It was a certain level —
one that came with its own set of beliefs.
Beliefs I considered completely normal at the time —
or perhaps just refused to look at from a distance.

After all, everyone around me was the same way.
So naturally, I fell in line too.

Pretty early on, I might add.
From the age of fifteen, there was no stopping.

Back then, I found it unimaginable to break out of that cycle —
so instead of changing my lifestyle,
I went straight back to my old, well-worn patterns,
right after a quick “fix.”

Suddenly, I wanted to make up for everything I had missed over the past year.
So I threw myself into preparing for summer — just like I always did.

I thought, I might miss out on something.

And whoever misses out quickly falls behind
from the intoxicating freedom of the early twenties.
That’s what they told me.
Though I can’t quite remember who exactly.

Probably no one —
but we all know we want to be part of it.

You have to make the most of it — “you only live once...”
Let go, as they say.

Sometimes, though, it happens that the imprint of an unresolved trauma steps in —
separating you, at least partly, from the circus,
forcing you to turn inward for a while.

There, you get the chance to see things
from a few steps away —
things that might have once seemed normal.
From that point on,
you either go back, or you begin to drift away.

Of course, that too is a process,
where at first you often find yourself returning to the “matrix.”
Through self-sabotaging patterns and addictions,
I did the same for a long time.

No matter how much self-discipline I practiced,
I somehow always turned back —
but nothing was ever the same again.

The sleepless nights eventually stopped bringing
that sense of freedom so deeply ingrained in the collective.

And then, inevitably,
there comes a turning point from which there’s no way back —
because after a while, you realize
that almost no one actually enjoys it.

Not even when it looks that way on the surface.