82. Thoughts and feelings fluctuate weekly.
About ex boyfriends and daddy issues, 222 angel number, my new found love for gardening, 4 seasons in the countryside and my desire to write.
My dad once asked me if I’d not rather date someone who bought me flowers on Valentine’s Day instead of being a dick all of the time. As a teenager I had daddy issues and ended up dating a guy with his own issues. It was chaos all over the place, all the time. With age I’ve learned that most teenage girls fall in love with the cool-bad-boy and that I was just living a normal teenage girl’s life. Yesterday C and I celebrated Sant Jordi and he took me horse riding in the mountains for three hours. He regularly brings me fresh flowers and brings me coffee to bed every morning. I found an angel and everyone deserves to feel the love that I feel with C in my life. We should accept more than the love we think we deserve, no matter what. (A good old teenage The Perks of Being a Wallflower quote fits in well here).
My new adult self is learning to allow myself to flow in and out of emotions without categorising them. My peak moment this week was listening to reggaeton in the car whilst crying my eyes out without shame. Before starting therapy I used to fear being angry or sad. They were two emotions that would make me feel very uncomfortable and I’d try to bounce back as soon as possible to avoid feeling sadness or anger for too long. Nowadays I’m learning to welcome all feelings without categorising them as good or bad.
That having being said, lately I’ve been feeling emotionally blocked and overall in quite a negative mindset. My inner voice has been harsh and making me feel as though I’m not good enough. I’ve been feeling like I’m failing with this newsletter because of looking at figures, numbers, graphs and stats instead of what I feel when writing, what people message me saying they felt after reading the POMELO or how I grow every week as a person and writer. Those are the real reasons behind why I do this and the emotions I feel can’t be represented by a number of subscribers or likes.
Sometimes it’s too easy to let our mind run wild with comparisons and lose our focus. Today when I opened up the writer’s dashboard I saw that I have 222 subscribers. I decided to take it as a sign from the Universe. As a sign from my angels telling me that I’m doing fine. I then proceded to Google “222 angel number meaning” and this is what came up:
222 angel number meaning: often associated with balance, stability, and harmony, so the appearance of this number may indicate that you are being encouraged to focus on these qualities in your life. The number 222 may also be a reminder to trust in the journey of your life, and to have faith in the outcome.
Being gentle with myself is important to me. Being able to trust the process and let myself flow. Learning to welcome all emotions and finding new ways to take care of myself. I’ve discovered gardening recently, more specifically: weeding.
My new found passion is weeding the garden and seeing how clean and well-kept the garden looks afterwards. It’s been a form of meditation for me: leaving my phone at home, putting my gloves on and focussing on nothing other than the green leaves I need to pull up. It takes time but it’s a gentle, calm, relaxing movement. I can allow my mind to go blank and to feel basic human feelings like bending down, kneeling on the soil, getting dirty, seeing little bugs, feel my muscles begin to ache from repeated movement, seeing a snake eat a whole lizard right where I need to plant my new flowers (#traumatised). I feel very proud of everything I’ve learned this year living in the countryside. I understand how the garden works. When to know if plants need more or less water, when it’s time to plant fruit and vegetables in each season, how to recognise plants by their leaves, shape and size. A recent very proud moment was being in the U.K. without C and planting my grandma’s seedlings in her garden. I knew exactly what to do and it felt like second nature, it was a full circle moment and it was special.
Thinking of the fact that we’ve been living in the countryside for a whole year now makes me extremely emotional because we didn’t even last 12 months in our previous home in Barcelona. Living here and witnessing all four seasons happen around us has been so special. It’s been very relaxing but also exciting at the same time. Stress hasn’t been in control, as it was living in the city, and we’ve been able to really live and feel like we own our lives. Nature slows you down. There aren’t any crazy incentives happening everywhere 24/7, life just happens and time seems to flow slowly. Plants don’t grow overnight, the seasons don’t change drastically over a few days. Life happens but it takes time. Nature has its own rhythm and you fall into it while living here. I’m feeling extremely humbled and grateful for having been able to live here for a whole year. I feel like I can tick off the “countryside living” box off my list and say that I really did make the most of every present moment.
Lately this feeling’s been creeping up on me. A feeling that I thought would remain buried for much longer because it’s not yet felt like the right moment. I’ve been feeling a hum in my bones regarding writing. Maybe - I’m pretty sure of it - the arrival of Spring has something to do with it. Leaving Winter behind makes such a big difference: days are longer and lighter, the birds have awoken and are singing again, flowers are blooming and the grass is green again. I feel like I’m once again surrounded by life and I feel more energy to do things. In this case, I feel like I want to write more and maybe try turning a few ideas I have on paper into words and seeing where they go. Who knows what will happen… I don’t want to force myself to produce for the sake of it but I do know that it feels wonderful to feel that desire again and know that I’ve not lost that fire in me.
I feel like, as good as Substack has been for my writing journey, often I feel discouraged by the metrics and numbers that we are forced to face in the backend. The social media spin it’s taking is interesting but I am wondering if it works for what I want to do?
This is to say that I think writing should be a private practice, for millions to read. And nowadays it’s almost impossible to do it that way, unless you have the resources to dedicate yourself to it full time.
Already I think you are doing much better than A LOT of people. You had the courage to remove yourself from city living and you are learning how to care for the earth and skills which are the real privilege in today’s world!
Emotions are something we cannot really control much, they come and go and they make us human! So don’t be too hard on yourself.
I think it’s outstanding that you can write well in two languages, that’ rare!
I am bilingual and I can’t write properly in my own native language anymore 😂
“My peak moment this week was listening to reggaeton in the car whilst crying my eyes out without shame.” I relate soooo much to this.
And I’m very happy that you’re learning to allow yourself feel all the emotions without judge, it’s so liberating! (Is even liberating a word?)