Hello Coco : A diary

Tag: Self-care

  • Post Break-Up Cause and Effect: Where Do I Go Next?

    There’s a lot we experience when getting out of a long-term relationship. We have the lifestyle shift; not saying good morning and goodnight to the same person everyday, the silence of moving into your own place, the withdrawals from your own language and inside jokes that are no longer relevant, and the change of emergency contact information digesting that they won’t be that person for you anymore.

    You start waking up alone and feeling a sadness in your heart because things are strange and different. You haven’t gotten excited about the ‘new adventure’ yet. Eventually after nights out with friends, drinking, smoking, and all other vices, you start to enjoy coming home to yourself and living inside your own head again. You notice the milk is always in the same place in the fridge and you don’t have to load the dishwasher a specific way to avoid a debate on why the forks should be separated based on their size. You come and go as you please without needing an itinerary and being on-time. You feel relief knowing you don’t need to emotionally regulate another person when your cup is empty. You begin to feel freedom and radical acceptance to your own preferences than expecting push back.

    Then you chop off all your hair, get Lasik and throw out all your glasses that always made you self-conscious. You stop wearing sweatpants altogether, and spend some money on something you’ve always wanted or that vacation you’ve been meaning to take.

    You begin to attend dance classes because you’ve always wanted to try it and you watch and smile as it flourishes into an unexpected ritual of self-care. You begin to develop beautifully platonic connections and start to feel the light come back into your body a little more.

    After some time making these leaps you find yourself asking, ‘Why haven’t I done this sooner?’. The answers to that question causes an internal rift. How scary of you to let yourself coast for so long in discomfort and without regard to your truest wants. You must have really been struggling with your internal compass. You heal some and forgive your family as you also forgive whomever made them feel like they couldn’t exist wholly for what they are – human.

    You begin to exercise and that motivates you to eat healthier, and with all the release of happy chemicals your libido kicks up. You start to fit into your old clothes and you’re feeling more confident and fulfilled on a normal day-to-day basis. You start thinking of other avenues of health to explore like perhaps your fertility, or taking blood tests to learn more about where you can improve. You lean further into therapy, start taking the medications you need, and begin to see yourself in a different frame of mind.

    With the increase in confidence you begin to assert yourself more at work in conversations and projects that stimulate you. You start to develop more of a connection to your coworkers and build on the energy to form relationships even outside of work. Your boss is telling you that they’ve noticed your hard work and your coworker is saying, “you’re a completely different person than when we first met.”

    You pick up that writing project and remember how much you love it. With your newfound confidence, you begin a blog again (after deleting several In the past for fear of judgment). With that leap you are beaming with energy from the self expression and anonymous and honest connections.

    You start to ask yourself, “What’s next?”. Your therapist says, “Make sure you enjoy it as you go instead of leaping too quickly onward. The snowball can roll slower if you want it to.” So you did just that – you slowed it down a bit, took breaks from stimulation, and made sure you touched grass every chance you could to really process and feel it.

    You begin to reflect on the decisions you made in the past and start to question if they were the right ones. Was committing to moving back home to Ohio next year really the right decision or was I acting out of fear because I was about to terminate that long-term relationship? Was I attempting to seek comfort or acceptance from my family so that we would feel bonded in a way that perhaps I needed in that moment? They’ve always wanted you to move back and leaning in perhaps provided a dopamine hit to a bond that has always been known to be distinguished quickly – that much more addicting to receive.

    Will Ohio even provide me with a good quality of life either to the same degree or more than what you have right now? Will moving back home truly bring your avoidant family closer together or are you hoping for patterns and trends to just change now that you’ve been in therapy for so long and feel you can tackle it the challenge? Why does that fall on you again?

    Most importantly, would you really survive on only 90 days of sunshine instead of the 300 you get now? What if you compromised on visiting three times a year instead of two? Will your family and friends in Ohio understand or will they be disappointed and lash out? How could you make decisions like that in such a vulnerable space? It’s okay, you were doing the best you could. Life is messy.

    If you did stay where you are that would mean that you can feel comfortable feeling at home again – not moving into this new place & lifestyle only to leave it a year later. You can stop selling your furniture and worrying about how much to save by next March. You can be open to long-term partnerships when the feeling is right. You can stick with the same dance classes and community that you’ve spent these past four months investing in. You can watch your best friends kids grow older and give them all of your love. You can stay at the job (or not!) that is reliable and pays you enough to live in a safe neighborhood by myself – something you’d potentially giving up moving home.

    What if the biggest roll of this snowball is staying put. What if you use this time to advocate for yourself at your job to move in a different direction that feels more aligned with your long-term goals. What if you start to take these HR projects even more seriously and connect with the right people on them for the right exposure and receive mentorship. If the transition does occur, you’d want to stay longer as to hold it on your resume right?

    What if you let yourself exist as single person here and then eventually, when you’re ready, open yourself up to having a truly connected relationship with a man. A man that doesn’t come from Ohio values, politics and single-lens perspectives. Imagine you find the right person here that is emotionally grounded. A person that breaks your relationship patterns and your inner child feels safe and protected with. You are happy and fulfilled completely and then intentionally start a family like you want. A family that speaks up and forgives quickly, one that allows for physical touch and sweetness, radical acceptance and candor. And warmth.

    Lastly, you’d have to ask If your future self would be excited and proud of your decisions that you’re making now as you are of your younger self taking the big risk of coming to Colorado in the first place.

    We will never know if the decision is going to be 100% correct one until we try it. Leaning into our intuition is our best bet and staying in-tune to my intuition will be the ultimate key in determining what my next choice will look like. That intuition will change the trajectory and momentum as I keep experiecing new things around me, so I can’t truly expect to know for sure.

    And the reality is, is that the snowball never actually stops. It also didn’t just start after this breakup- it has been ongoing and constantly being reshaped into what I need in that moment and time. Last year, it was moving incredibly slow because it was so small from letting myself be small. I let time ride by high on my couch because the relationship I was in sucked everything out of me. I didn’t feel like I had autonomy and a the right words to communicate it, so I held back in fear.

    Luckily the new lease term that came up sparked enough panic attacks to give me the momentum I needed to really push everything down the hill.

    Choosing where and how it moves next in terms of where home is for me and if where I am 40 hours a week will be possibly the biggest decisions I can make after the breakup. Everything in between has been highly influential and exactly what I needed to get to this point. The community I’ve joined, the passions I’ve explored, the liberation I have with my sexuality, the reflections and immense shift in my mental health via taking the time to add value into my day-to-day – add purpose, have been the stars guiding me to regaining my sparkle once again.

    Regardless of wherever I go, whatever I do and the new things I learn, I can depend on myself now to keep myself moving forward and I can’t wait to see what I choose next.

    Home. – Where will it be?
    Denver, Ohio, or someplace new? When?

    Family. – Values and boundaries.
    Kids? Commitment?
    How much time do I need for myself first?

    Lifestyle – Day-to-day purpose & self-care
    Building attunement and trust that I’ve got me
    Weight training, nutrition, mental health accountability

    Work. – Regulated and mentally sustainable
    Recruiting or HR?

    Passions. – Continuous Self-Expression
    Blog, stories & journaling lifestyle rituals- where do I want to take these?

    Experiences. – Living outside my comfort zone
    Experiencing new dance, traveling solo & learning other cultures

  • Rewiring Past Decisions: My 40-hour+ Work Week

    I’ve noticed as of late that my job holds little in my brain for debate considering it gives me stability in the world we live in today. I have a mountain of debt as well that keeps me tied to it in a way that feels a little repressive. With that, very slight sour feelings arise when I think of my job and the pressures they entail. I’ve noticed when I ask myself about it, I want to clam up a bit because I don’t feel like I have an option to debate right now.

    I’m making big decisions in my life right now regarding the possibility of moving out of state, my sexuality, and lots of other personal life choices, but this is something I find myself avoiding more often than not. I’ve let myself do it too and in this moment I feel the courage to see it head on even if just for this post at first.

    Being in Recruiting, my value is held by metrics of how quickly I can close jobs and how happy I can make my hiring managers in the process. Being that recruiting is a people business – candidates are half the equation – it can be unreliable, yet we still feel the brunt of the deadline regardless of that variability.

    I’ve been doing my line of work since I moved here in 2017, though in various settings and angles. It was the first job that offered enough money to eat more than Rice-a-Roni and PBJ sandwhiches. I clung to it and put every effort I could into making those numbers and deadlines my mission for survival. I eventually worked my way up and now am senior in my profession making over six figures. Since I was bad with money in my twenties though and moved to another state on a whim with no money in my savings, I accrued a fuck ton of debt that has my salary wrapped up, so I still come from a state of scarcity and lack.

    I feel shame around my debt and my financial decisions that I had made, but with everything going on in my life I’ve been able to compartmentalize and have fun in the present with everything else I’m up to. Reaching into my truest desires elsewhere has allowed me to take a breathe from over thinking my finances and live in moments that don’t cost a thing. It’s been helping me have a more healthy look at my relationship with money and even so my debt.

    This entry isn’t about my debt though. It’s about the job I choose to have for 40 hours+ a week. With me initially getting into this field out of fear, lack, and need for stability (rightfully so), I look back and ask myself that if none of those feelings were present what profession would I have chosen for myself. If I had came to Colorado with a safety net and could take my time, what would I have explored? Would I have used my Professional Writing degree?

    There’s always been a part of me that has considered writing as a job whether it be professional writing like technical, editing, proposals, etc; or fiction writing like the stories that I’m verrrry slowwwly working through right now.

    Impostor syndrome creeps up when I think about how I haven’t had the motivation to work on my fantasy story in over a month, how I am taking a very long break from my psychological thriller novel, and how I over-critique myself which sucks the joy out of projects/this blog sometimes. This blog is something I just started up a little over a month ago and I’m addicted to it. It’s a season of writing that I’ve really leaned into unexpectedly.

    This type of writing though really requires me to dig into my internal monologue, personal psychological analysis, internal conflict, and traumas. It can be too much sometimes, or I harp on the same things over and over again as I’m processing through it. I can run through loops, get lost, distract myself and end up looking back trying to reverse outline because of my ADHD. Even with all of that though, it’s been keeping me very present in my life and letting repressed feelings bubble up to the surface so that I can see them for what they are.

    All of this said, my writing fluctuates. It’s inconsistent, doesn’t have a clear theme or direction for a career path, and I’ve always told myself I’m not a good editor and technical writing would be too stiff for me to do daily. Additionally, what if I do it as a career and the pressure and critique of it ruin my love for it?

    So, then I sit with myself on other ideas.

    When I was young I wanted to be like Nancy Drew – a Detective! My dad told me to choose something more realistic so I landed on a Veterinarian for a while, but I quickly found out that I couldn’t handle that emotionally and another factor is they aren’t paid well. Also vet school is so expensive. I took a web development boot camp a few years back to see if my brain could handle something like that, but absolutely not. I was always creative and liberal arts focused in high school and college – math & arithmetic were never even an average skill set of mine.

    I’ve taken career quizzes, personality tests, legitimately Googled jobs and just peeked around for ideas. It’s ironic that I’m a recruiter and doing so much as if I haven’t seen every job (in corporate land) out there already.

    I’ve considered being a career coach/government career assistant because I love helping people find their potential and getting them on the right path – teaching them about interviewing and resume development. I’ve considered getting into the operations side of Human Resources like being a business partner, and I even completed my PHR last year before switching companies. I just don’t know if I will be able to transition into that department being that I’m at a start-up and everything is quite small. The job market is trash right now, so the chances of a company taking an opportunity on someone without direct experience is unlikely considering they are probably getting people who do have the skill sets already.

    Out of everything I explored, leaning into HR will be the best match for me. Keeping writing as a hobby I think will be the healthiest option, and if I want to publish something down the road – if the stars align – then fabulous.

    Considering my initial point, my job holds my heart in a binder of sorts. It’s more difficult for me to be risky with my job than it is with anything else in my life. It makes me feel too dependent, and weak thinking that if I lost my job I will be in ruin due to my financial situation. This means that taking leaps feels like an immense effort. Advocating for my growth at my current company, asking for more and leaning in feels scary. On top of that, because HR isn’t a ‘passion’ of mine – it’s a paycheck that offers more stability than recruiting – it’s not necessarily something I’m like “Oh, I want to do this!” it’s a means to an end where I’m thinking, “I should do this because it will make my life simpler, but I need to start making the decisions.”

    Perhaps changing my mindset around going after an HR job will help motivate me into making the risk feel even more worth it. If I put a deeper ‘why’ behind it, it could leverage me to take the risks. I think one thing too that I forget often is what I ‘deserve’.

    One day, a few years back, I was visiting my therapist and she prescribed me a higher dose of antidepressants. My internal monologue found its way out as I was debating when I would start the new dose based on logistics of my schedule and picking up the prescription. None of the logistical factors were all that daunting- it was more coming from a place of laziness when she asked me why I couldn’t just pick them up that day. She followed my rant by saying, “Don’t you think you deserve it?”

    It stuck with me because I do find that I talk myself out of what I deserve based solely on the weakness in my mind tied to lack of motivation and laziness. That was the depression and anxiety talking to a certain extent. Though I’m medicated completely now and happy, I still run into that internal conflict from time to time – including right now.

    You want to change fields so that you can be more stimulated and seen as more of a business partner than transactional- Don’t you deserve that?

    You want to keep working on your writing projects because it fuels your heart and creative spirit – don’t you deserve that?

    What all do I deserve? And when it comes to a job, what do people deserve from me but my best self? I can only give my best self when I feel like I’m stimulated, challenged, and living up to my own potential. Do I feel like I have all those things now in recruiting at my current job? I’m definitely challenged, but stimulated is another thing. Recruiting is something I’ve always done therefor I know all the ins and outs of it – every job I may work on might be vastly different from the last, but the way you go about it is truly the same. If you experience obstacles there are similar ways out of them as you’ve done prior. But I could say that same thing with every job out there.

    I think I just want to feel valued in my role as a partner rather than someone that needs to hit specified numbers, metrics and cater to the needs of a stakeholder as if they are my client. I have ideas and a voice that I want to use. Recruiting can almost feel so transactional and I want more depth and challenge in my day-to-day. I want projects on enablement and process improvements. I want to uncover gaps and think logically about things that could have a high impact. I believe I can meet in the middle and do that within a HR based position – I just need the opportunity to get there. I deserve that opportunity.

    So, if Mel Robbins says that each decision I make can change my entire life then what decisions should I make at this point regarding my job? What risks can I make to get me out of ‘stuck’ and stimulate my day-to-day life?

    Instead of living in the state of scarcity – how can I go after what I deserve?

  • Understanding My Body at 30: A Post Break Up Health Epiphany

    I feel like I’m late. Late figuring out how my body works, and how it’s been operating all this time without my knowledge. Ironically, my period is extra late in result.

    Funny enough (and where it started) I got an IUD and a fertility test in the same week.

    I spent about a week researching IUDs to pick the best one, then I spent the rest of the week researching my new PCOS diagnosis from my follicle / AMH count from the fertility test. A diagnosis that explains my irregular periods that every PCP told me not to worry about and that it was completely normal. Though common – not normal, I hate them for that.

    Not only do I have PCOS, but during my IUD appointment I had a pap done at the same time, spontaneously as just like a ‘why not?’ only to find out that I have a high-level of precancerous cells on my cervix and that they need to do a biopsy and most likely a LEEP procedure – though I tested negative for HPV. My doctor is confused.

    As you might imagine I’m processing, and my cervix is fucking pissed from the IUD and now this biopsy.

    How long have I had PCOS and not noticed the symptoms? How long have I had these precancerous cells – my last pap came back normal just two years ago. False negative? What is happening?

    On top of all this, recently I realized that I want to have kids – not now, but when I’m 35+. With this LEEP procedure it shaves off a part of my cervix and with PCOS it makes conceiving extra intentional. If I have a second LEEP procedure down the road the difficulty increases.

    I keep thinking that If I was still in my last relationship that I most likely would have never sought out this information. The IUD wouldn’t haven’t happened, therefor the pap wouldn’t have happened since I wasn’t due for one. The fertility appointment wouldn’t have happened since I knew she didn’t want to have kids, which means I wouldn’t have learned about PCOS.

    I would have cruised under the radar for who knows how long.

    Sometimes I make myself nervous. Initially for not exploring my true wants and desires and staying with her too long, letting myself be discontent. It impacted my need to explore my sexual health.

    I feel like I have been in a two-month long sex-ed/women’s biology class that I didn’t realize I very much needed.

    What feels sad is when I discussed all this with my mom, she didn’t have any answers either – in fact she freaked me out with her biopsy procedure she had 30 years ago saying it was ‘traumatic’. Funny/not funny enough she told me that story the day before I found out I needed one myself.

    Every time I think about all of this, I feel a twinge of sadness in my heart at the possibility that maybe a baby might never happen for me, especially if I wait 5-7 years like I had planned. What could happen in those years that make my chances even smaller if I didn’t realize I was already carrying two burdens now at just 30.

    I didn’t realize how much it meant to me until I let myself actually explore it. Being with her the last 6 years and knowing she didn’t want a baby or even to get married, I almost let myself stay concrete in her choices because I wanted us to be together. I remember I would feel guilty about questioning it because it would be me going back on my word to her that, that wouldn’t change.

    It wasn’t until we broke up and I realized that everything was a possibility that I began to open myself up to exploring it even if I had conditioned myself to repress it. I let myself think about it, like really think about it. I watch my couple friends with their kid, my other friend doing it alone, watch my brother with his three kids struggling financially – looking at very difficult sides of parenting vs really beautiful moments understanding that there will always be both.

    If we hadn’t broken up, I wouldn’t have explored being with men again and would have really missed out on how my body could feel, experiencing different types of sex and penetration. I wouldn’t have felt sexually liberated to try new things. I would have kept feeling small.

    I would have kept feeling small.

    I would have kept feeling like my wants, needs and desires were not worth exploring – not allowed. I would have kept smoking copious amounts of pot, letting myself watch hours of TV and play hours of video games, let myself stay cooped up at home scared of interacting with other people, reading my smut books and living through their experiences – wishing for my own.

    I would have been perpetuating an unhealthy, unsatisfied lifestyle.

    I know I’m processing and admittedly having a hard time with it, but I still pick now. I pick figuring out my PCOS and these precancerous cells and the symptoms of this IUD then to ever go back there again.

    I pick having really great sex with multiple guys who teach me new things about what I like, don’t like and what I want to ask for.

    I pick the confidence I’ve gotten from throwing myself into uncomfortable, social situations and seeing my personality grow and expand in a way I really didn’t know existed.

    I pick now, even with the hurt and confusion.

    I pick now for me, then and now.

  • Therapy & Character Development: Writing my first book

    I have had this story in my head for years. Whenever I had felt a subtly glimmer of inspiration, I would build it in my mind little by little but never actually putting it into words.

    Over the course of the last year and a half, I went through some of the worst bouts of depression. I wrestled with the thought of feeling meaningless, like I had nothing really to live for. I didn’t have drive or motivation in my career. I smoked weed to get through a lot of the long days and nights. I had been growing apart from the person I had been dating and with all these things combined I was severely under stimulated.

    I would scroll through TikTok, searching for keywords like ‘passion’ and ‘quarter-life crisis’ just to figure out what other people were saying. I was looking for guidance on what to do with my life.

    I don’t know what exact moment sparked this next chapter, but all I know is that it took 3 and a half weeks of isolation and a tiny spark of inspiration to just open up my laptop and begin writing an outline for the story I had always wanted, but was never brave enough, to write.

    The issue was that I knew the story would be personal, regardless of whatever fiction I sewed into it, there was going to be raw and real feelings -my heart- knitted into most of everything I wrote. Not because I meant to do it, but because it’s all I knew. It wasn’t till later did I realize that I needed it to be that way.

    I put it off for so long because I thought that if I had decided to actually publish it, that people in my life would actually read it. The people who are not actively addressed, would know who they were in the story.

    Even if I didn’t publish it though, there was fear someone would find it and read it. Like my best friend read my diary in my sophomore year of high school, causing a rift between us for two years. The summers after that, I would burn my journals on solo camping trips after finishing them for exactly that reason. Fear. Fear that someone would read something they didn’t like and that I would lose them.

    You’re probably thinking, “Damn, what the fuck are you writing in those journals?”

    Everything. You know those thoughts that you know are not healthy, not politically correct, not censored – your ‘monkey brain’ thoughts that you are conditioned to think from your environment, your background and your own personal experiences and traumas. Those.

    What she read that day was directly about her and how I felt about the decisions she was making with her life. Thoughts that were harsh and unguarded, but needed to be picked out from my brain and laid out on paper where they could rest and I could let it go.

    Writing has always been my therapy. With this new book that I continued to write, pushing through the fear, I have digested my most difficult feelings. I have gotten closure from my parents, went after what I truly desired, and worked through things that I never knew lived deep beneath my skin.

    I kept asking myself when writing it, ‘Is this too much of me – should I make it more fiction?” I laughed to myself because a lot of it was/is fiction, just things that I actually wanted to happen in my life. I was writing for the person I was, am and wanted to be without realizing it.

    So, as I was developing this character, I began to develop the person I really want to be. She’s still in progress by a large sum, but I’m starting to get to know her more, what she really wants and how she’s going to get there.

    Fast forward a few months later and I’m sitting in an almost empty apartment, the person I just broke up with going solo on their family trip as I count down the few days I have before I move into my new studio apartment. Alone. Well, with two very cute cats, but alone.

    I started this book thinking it would be a gutsy project, only to find that it has opened my eyes to an entirely different world that I want to be actively apart of and build from the studs.