year of reconciliation

Last year,
I want­ed to be in a new state phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly when hit 40 on June 27, 2022. 

I got what I asked for, just not in the way I had imagined.

I was knocked to my knees, sud­den­ly loop­ing dai­ly in an old state of pan­ic so in­tense that I dropped to 74 pounds, en­rolled my­self in an in­ten­sive out­pa­tient pro­gram with 2x/week ke­t­a­mine for 8 weeks, and stayed asleep as much as I could, fear­ing consciousness. 

If some­one had told me it would take a year to be­gin to heal I don’t know if I would have sur­vived the thought. 

I wasn’t sui­ci­dal, I just didn’t want to be here on Earth. 

But now a year doesn’t seem like much time at all to de­vote to chang­ing pat­terns and neur­al path­ways, es­pe­cial­ly those we’ve been re­in­forc­ing since childhood.

This 40–41 was a year of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion – with death, how I ab­sorb the dark side of re­al­i­ty, with the con­se­quences of be­ing bound­ary­less, and with the abyss we all face at one time or another. 

I thought I had a pret­ty sol­id spir­i­tu­al life and a col­lect­ed well of wis­dom I pulled strength from. While that was true, I’ve been hum­bled to learn that there were parts of me that don’t know a thing about how to live. 

A piece of me un­der­stood that if you can’t con­nect to awe and a cer­tain amount of joy or peace, there is some­thing you don’t yet know about living. 

Holy shit, we are all stu­dents.

I do not seek joy, but I do seek the mas­tery of my mind and con­scious­ness. On the worst days, a shred of self un­der­stood my as­sign­ment. I am still heal­ing, but I can kin­da laugh now that I’ll be re­cov­er­ing from turn­ing 40–41 for the next decade.

Any­thing I ac­com­plished this past year was done by sheer will, on days I could, and with the help of my fam­i­ly and friends, and both west­ern and al­ter­na­tive med­i­cine and therapies. 

Thank you all for fol­low­ing along, even when I went ra­dio silent for awhile. The art you see is just one man­i­fes­ta­tion of the art of liv­ing I am sharp­en­ing my ways with. 

One day,
I hope to be a wise old woman mak­ing art on a peace­ful moun­tain, and you can vis­it me there.

Love,

—ruby roth #41

* I am a healthy weight again, I’ve gained more mus­cle than I’ve had in years, and I’m up to push­ing 205 on the leg press. 🖤💪🏽

Flom­mist Ruby Roth is an artist, de­sign­er, cre­ative strate­gist, and the au­thor-il­lus­tra­tor of four lead­ing books for kids. Her work has been fea­tured on To­day, CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC News, and oth­er ma­jor me­dia out­lets. Copy­right © 2023 Ruby Roth.

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