Catch up with part three of the Wrestling with Death series here.
I almost did not write this article. I have just spent 10 minutes thinking myself out of procrastinating. This article was to be written a week ago but somehow, I justified that writing it yesterday would be better. Clearly, yesterday didn’t work out, and today almost did not. I am just hoping to finish it today and not postpone it mid-way. The thought of the hell loop is what got me to actually write.
I had the idea of writing about the hell loop since last week. But today, as I was wallowing in my indecision, my precursor to procrastinating, I realised that I was in the hell loop. Writing this article about it is actually helping me break my loop.
In the Netflix series Lucifer, they portray hell as a loop of the sins you have not atoned for. If you feel guilty about something, when you go to hell, according to the TV show, you keep replaying your guilt over and over. That is your hell.
In the pursuit of my dreams, I have noticed a pattern similar to the loop. There are certain things that seem to happen in a given order over and over again. For instance, what I was about to do today – postponing my writing. I have observed that when I begin any routine, it only lasts for a week and a half before I crash. The crash would be sudden. I would do the same things over and over and justify them, leading me into my hell loop.
I have been on a consistent routine for the last two weeks. The routine is essential because it is helping me crawl out of a very dark time in my life. A time when I had lost motivation and sight of my goals. In my current routine, I can say I have done a little better and I’m rooting for myself to keep it up. I am starting my third week but as I said, I almost died today. My hell was calling.
I am using the analogy of death because every time I start a routine, a new being emerges. A being with dreams, goals and the motivation to go after them. But after a week, the routine disintegrates and the person I was dies. I feel dead and unmotivated. Neither goal-oriented nor paying attention to my future self, I just exist, doing the bare minimum to pass time. I embody the idea that some people die in their twenties but get buried in their eighties.
So whenever my routine disintegrates, I die. When I die, I am thrown into hell. In my hell, I see the things I should have done at the time to escape it but I can never get myself to do them. I see the goals I could have accomplished if only I got myself to do something. I see the things I could have achieved, but unfortunately, breaking out of the hell loop is not a walk in the park.
If you read my articles preceding this one, you can have a picture of what hell feels like and how trapping it is. It takes hitting an ultimate low to get called back to action. But since I have grown accustomed to the death and hell loop occurrence (which is weird to say), I work just hard enough to feel better about myself, and that crashes after a week and a half. As I was about to crash today, I saw it. Kudos to myself. I broke the life-sucking pattern.
Part of my routine is writing. Writing these articles is helping me process through the dungeon I got sucked in. Furthermore, it is in this fourth article of the Wrestling with death series that I feel like I have an edge over death. The other three, for me, were a real fight. Reflecting back, I have died and was thrown into the hell loop so many times. Today, I have just escaped it.
This routine has helped me conceptualise a few goals that I want to pursue and achieve. It has gotten me to write about myself which I found very difficult over my last year of writing. The current routine has made me feel, up until this morning, that my fight with death was on the back burner. Having this routine has enabled me to clarify a lot of the darkness that had taken refuge in me.
Now that I have overcome it today, have created hope for myself. I do not know for how long I will stay afloat and keep to this routine. But I have crafted the possibility for a brighter future. Something to look forward to.
I had thought of finishing the wrestling with death series with this article, but I’m not so sure right now. If my fight with death continues, I’ll need to keep writing because the writing of this series has been a literal lifesaver. It is what is keeping me sane. It is keeping me afloat.
As I escape my death today and my eventual hell loop, I look forward to building on my routine. I look forward to getting through the third week and possibly three more weeks after that.
What is your death while alive? What makes you feel as if you are already dead just dragging through life till your eventual burial? Are you living in a hell loop? What leads you to your hell loop?
These are questions worth pondering. Create your own happy life.
Also Read: Wrestling With Death: Coming Out of the Dungeon
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Wrestling With Death is a four-part series (running every Friday) by Stephen Kimani, drawing from his internal fights with the self, in the throes of trying to recapture momentum and stay afloat.
