The plan was airtight.
Weight goals, pace targets, product roadmap, better skin, better food, better relationship. It was colour-coded and ambitious enough to make me feel like I’d finally figured it out.
One spreadsheet. One system. One shot at resetting everything.
Day one went fine.
Day two, I was sitting on the kitchen floor at 11:30 a.m., eating bread straight from the packet and staring blankly at my untouched workout plan.
Nothing major had gone wrong. No crisis. No breakdown. Just a vague cloud of apathy, some bloating, and that familiar heaviness that settles in when things start slipping out of reach.
I didn’t feel like moving. I didn’t want to try. And the worst part was how fast the voice kicked in.
You never follow through. You always do this.
I could already see myself dropping the routine, pretending I was just “revising the plan,” letting one small mess turn into a full-blown undoing.
But that didn’t happen.
I stayed. In the discomfort. In the disappointment. I didn’t write a new to-do list. I didn’t punish myself with a tighter routine. I didn’t try to earn my way back into worth.
I sat with the wreckage of a perfect plan and decided not to abandon myself this time.
That moment didn’t look like strength. It looked like staying in my crumpled T-shirt and taking deep breaths on the floor. But I didn’t disappear into self-loathing. I didn’t ghost my own effort. I just… paused.
The next morning, I woke up late. I skipped the run. But I drank water. I made a better breakfast. I wrote for ten minutes. It didn’t feel like a win, but it wasn’t a loss either.
There was no glow. No rush of pride. But there was movement. Gentle, unremarkable, steady.
I’ve tried the dramatic transformations. The reset buttons. The 30-day fixes. They burn bright, but they don’t last.
What’s working now is quieter.
It’s the part where I stop proving and start listening.
Where I notice I’m spiraling, and instead of fixing it, I slow it down.
Where I’m not heroic, but I’m present.
Some days, I climb steep trails, legs aching, breath heavy, heart full. Other days, I can barely walk past my desk without doubting everything. The contrast used to scare me. Now it just reminds me I’m still alive in my own process.
There’s nothing linear here. No clean arc. Just a body that’s learning. A mind that’s trying. A woman who’s still here.
I thought I had to glow up. Change everything. Arrive somewhere.
But I’m not here to shine. I’m here to stay.
Not because I got it right.
Because I didn’t leave when it got hard.
I burned through every expectation, every timeline, every story that said I had to become someone else first.
What’s left isn’t a polished version of me.
It’s just me.
And that finally feels like enough.
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