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COMPARISON DAYS: The bad days I will think of tomorrow and be grateful

Last updated: March 6th, 2022

I woke up the other morning to an alert on my phone. According to my app, today is Day 57 without smoking or drinking. The nice part is that my body can tell this, too. My chest already feels so much lighter, and I feel sick less often. I have been going for walks as a replacement activity, and today I have plans to go for a socially distanced walk with my friend.

I begin getting ready. It is supposed to be chilly, so I decide to wear one of my warmer flannel shirts. Unfortunately, this particular shirt has gone through the laundry too many times, and has shrunk to the point where the sleeves barely reach my wrists. I decide it is cold enough to wear my winter jacket, which will completely hide my shirt.

I begin walking to my friend’s area, and realize I have seriously misjudged the weather. It is quite warm out, and I am already beginning to sweat. Unfortunately, a major downside to having worn a comically small top is that taking my jacket off is not an option. So as the walk continues, my shirt begins sticking to my arms. I don’t have the words to describe what an unpleasant feeling that is.

A turn for the worse


COMPARISON DAYS – The bad days I will think of tomorrow and be grateful 1

This is when my mood starts to seriously take a turn for the worse.

I am typically an anxious person, and the idea of strangers looking at me makes me uncomfortable. I can feel the exact moment that I start to become anxious. It feels like a slightly less graceful transition than a werewolf becoming human. My legs start to feel heavy, and I become far too aware of how I am walking. It just spirals from there.

As I am walking, I notice a car up ahead, parked near a community mailbox. There are people in the car, and that is all it takes for my legs to feel heavy. I end up cutting across a park to avoid passing the car. As I cross the park, I find myself wishing once again that I had an invisibility cloak (the only thing I retained from the seven Harry Potter movies I’ve seen).

I feel it is important to mention that my walks do not usually go this way. For the first week without smoking or drinking, they were a total saving grace. For those first seven days, I needed my brain quiet, and to do that, I needed everything else to be loud. To get through those days, I filled the silence with audiobooks. I would walk for hours each day, listening to the same book over and over. I needed words to repeat inside my head the whole time, so my mind would stay quiet. And it worked. 

My mood has not subsided as I near my friend’s area. I begin wondering exactly how much longer I have before I inevitably get forehead wrinkles, because these days, my brow seems to always be furrowed.

Little sprinkles of happiness


COMPARISON DAYS – The bad days I will think of tomorrow and be grateful1

I finally meet up with my friend and we head to a nearby park. I am comfortable enough around her that I take off my jacket and air myself.

Seeing my friend helps my mood a bit, but not enough. Some days are just like that. We talk about what it would be like to be rich. Then about what it will be like when restrictions are lifted, and finally about what we will each eat when we get home.

I walk past a house that has seven lawn gnomes in their garden, each one in a different pose. I think about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and try to remember all their names.

On my walk home, I feel better, but not much. I am still too hot, and I am still uncomfortable as cars and people pass me. But then I walk past a house that has seven lawn gnomes in their garden, each one in a different pose. I think about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and try to remember all their names.

I think about how in college, whenever I was just sad, I would imagine tiny gnomes in little cheerful outfits with pom-poms. Their sole purpose was to make me feel better and less alone. I had always wondered what they got up to after college, and I guess now I know.

Days of reflection are good, but sometimes they just feel like this, awful with a touch of happy. I am happy I remembered the gnomes and I am happy that someone set them up in their garden. It bothers me that days like this usually start out with me feeling happy. I guess it has to be like this, because if I woke up feeling upset, I just wouldn’t get out of bed.

I don’t need to feel happy all the time, though. Little sprinkles are enough.

I judge myself a little less


COMPARISON DAYS – The bad days I will think of tomorrow and be grateful2

Each day of the 57 that have passed, I judge myself a little bit less. I always tell myself, you need to experience the bad to appreciate the good. Although I have a feeling I would appreciate the good just fine, without all the bad.

I call the bad days “comparison days” because I will think of this tomorrow and be grateful a shirt is no longer sticking to my arms. Or, maybe I will walk down the street and not care if I pass people. Maybe tomorrow will be excellent.

The day I decided to stop drinking, I wrote down exactly how I felt and hung it on my wall. Time heals and time helps, but it also makes me forget how bad things can be. This is a feeling I needed to remember.

I lay on my floor staring at my ceiling, wondering if my breath would ever come back. I thought about how, when I was a kid, I would imagine all my furniture being up there. I would spend hours rearranging the imaginary furniture, creating a life so much like the one I already had, but just different enough.

At that moment, on day one, I desperately wanted peace. For my sanity, that is the part I will remember, the part that is written on my wall because that is what made me change.

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