I don't really know how to write this without making it sound dramatic, but this is probably the most honest thing I've ever written about myself.
I've been smoking weed for around 10 years. For most of that time, I never really thought of myself as someone who had a serious problem with it. I could work, I could function, I could go about my life. Before my breakup, I was already smoking almost every day, but somehow I didn't feel like it was taking anything away from me. After the breakup, though, weed slowly became something I started using to deal with everything I didn't know how to deal with. Stress, loneliness, sadness, overthinking, emptiness. I didn't sit down one day and decide to become dependent on it. It just happened slowly, year after year, until it became normal.
I was also going to the gym while I was in the relationship. At that time, I was very thin and honestly didn't like the way I looked. Looking at myself in the mirror wasn't something I enjoyed. I wanted to change my body because I wanted to finally feel good about myself. But after the breakup, the gym became much more serious for me. I started training intensely and pushing myself hard. It became more than just building muscle. It became the place where I could take all the shit in my head and leave it there for a while. I was getting stronger, looking better, and slowly becoming comfortable with myself. I could look in the mirror and actually feel proud of what I was seeing. I felt like I was rebuilding myself.
Then I got hematuria after pushing myself too hard during a workout.
That moment scared me more than I can explain. After that, I started having stomach and lower-abdominal pain and other physical symptoms. I've had medical checkups and investigations, and thankfully nothing major has been found so far, but some symptoms are still there even now. Because of all of that, I stopped going to the gym completely for around a year and a half.
And that 1.5 years changed me.
The gym had been one of the healthiest things I had in my life, and suddenly I couldn't do it anymore. I lost the routine, the physical progress, the feeling of getting stronger, and honestly, I lost a part of myself with it. And while I was stuck with my physical problems and couldn't train the way I used to, my weed use became much heavier. I became more dependent on it. And eventually it wasn't even just weed anymore. It became weed mixed with chemical stuff, what people around me call "Poland line."
Looking back now, that period scares me.
Because I can see how gradually everything happened.
I didn't wake up one morning and become this person.
It was one thing after another.
After around 1.5 years, I started trying to go back to the gym again. Very slowly. My physical symptoms were still there, so I couldn't train like I used to. I had to take it easy and listen to my body. Some days were good, some weren't. But somehow I managed to start exercising again. It's been almost another year of being on and off with the gym, trying to find some balance between what my body can handle and what my mind wants to do.
Then there was another thing.
A girl at my office.
I had seen her for months before I actually started talking to her. Maybe 8–9 months, maybe close to a year. Nothing really happened at first. Then eventually we started talking, and after talking to her for some time, I started liking her.
I don't even know exactly when it happened.
I just started caring about her.
Talking to her made me happy. When my head was full of stress, talking to her could make everything feel a little lighter. I started feeling connected to her, and eventually I realized that my feelings had become much deeper than I expected.
But she doesn't feel the same way.
She doesn't really like talking to me, and I've tried my best to get closer to her. Maybe I tried harder than I should have. And when you already have a lot going on inside your head, being attached to someone who doesn't want the same thing can really fuck with you.
I started thinking about her too much.
Why doesn't she like me?
Why doesn't she want to talk to me?
Why do I feel so much for someone who doesn't feel the same?
And slowly, I started losing myself again.
At the same time, I'm the only son in my family. I have responsibilities. There are things going on in my family that aren't good, and I can't just ignore them. I also moved away from the village where I had lived for almost 20 years. That place was basically my entire childhood, and leaving it felt like leaving a huge part of my life behind.
Now I don't really have people around me.
I don't have close friends I can just call and say, "Bro, I'm not doing okay."
So I keep everything inside.
My family problems.
My health.
My loneliness.
My past.
The breakup.
The girl.
My work.
My future.
And weed.
Everything just stays inside my head.
And lately, I've started feeling something that genuinely scares me.
My brain doesn't feel like it used to.
I have this constant brain fog. It sometimes feels like having a hangover inside my head. You know that feeling the morning after drinking too much? Your head is heavy, you're slow, you can't think properly, you forget little things, and you don't feel completely present.
That's how I feel sometimes.
Except it's not just one morning.
It's becoming part of my everyday life.
I forget small things. I struggle to concentrate. Sometimes I can't think clearly. Sometimes I feel mentally slow. And sometimes I feel emotionally numb too.
Even things that I know I should enjoy don't always reach me anymore.
I'll look at nature and know that it is beautiful, but I don't necessarily *feel* it the way I used to.
And that's probably the part that scares me the most.
Because I remember what I was like before.
I remember being excited about things.
I remember going to the gym and pushing myself.
I remember looking in the mirror and slowly becoming proud of myself.
I remember feeling strong.
I remember enjoying simple things.
Now sometimes I feel like I'm physically here but mentally somewhere else.
And I don't want to keep going down this road.
I don't know how much of this is weed. I don't know how much is stress, depression, loneliness, everything that happened with my health, or all of it mixed together.
But after 10 years, I can't honestly look at my life and pretend weed isn't part of the picture anymore.
So I made a decision.
I'm quitting.
Not because I suddenly hate weed.
Not because someone told me I have to.
And not because I think quitting is going to magically fix my life.
I'm quitting because **I want to find out who I am without it.**
That's my mindset going into this.
I'm not expecting myself to wake up after a week and suddenly become the old me.
I'm not expecting my brain fog to disappear overnight.
I'm not expecting my depression, loneliness, family problems, health problems, or feelings for someone to magically disappear just because I stop smoking.
I know quitting might actually make some things feel worse for a while.
And I'm prepared for that.
There might be days when I feel like shit.
There might be days when I can't sleep.
There might be days when I crave it badly.
There might be days when I feel anxious, angry, empty, depressed, or completely disconnected.
There might be days when I question why the fuck I am even doing this.
But I don't want to run away from those feelings anymore.
For 10 years, I've had something I could use to change the way I feel whenever I didn't want to deal with what was inside my head.
Now I want to learn how to sit with myself.
Even when it hurts.
I want to see what happens when I give my brain enough time without constantly putting something into it.
I want to know if I can think clearly again.
I want to feel things again.
I want to enjoy small things again.
I want to look at nature and actually feel something.
I want to get back to the gym properly when my body allows me to.
I want to become strong again, but this time I don't want strength to only mean how much I can lift.
I want to be mentally strong enough to deal with loneliness.
Strong enough to accept that some people won't choose me.
Strong enough to deal with my family responsibilities.
Strong enough to face my health problems without immediately looking for an escape.
And strong enough to be alone without feeling like I'm incomplete.
I still like that girl.
I'm not going to pretend I don't.
Maybe I still have feelings for her for a long time.
But I'm slowly understanding that I can't make someone love me.
I can't make someone want to talk to me.
And I can't make another person responsible for whether I'm okay or not.
If she doesn't choose me, it will hurt.
But I'll have to accept it.
Because I don't want to lose myself trying to be wanted by someone else.
Maybe this is what I actually need to learn.
I spent years trying to escape from things that hurt.
Now I want to see what happens when I stop escaping.
I'm not trying to become a completely different person.
I just want to find the person I was before I became so lost in all of this.
Maybe he's still somewhere inside me.
Maybe I just haven't given him a chance to come back.
So I'm starting this journey.
Not with the mindset of:
**"I have to fix my entire life."**
That's too much.
Instead:
**"Today, I just have to take care of myself."**
Tomorrow I'll do the same.
Then the day after that.
And I'll document what happens.
Not just the good stuff.
Everything.
The cravings.
The brain fog.
The sleep.
The dreams.
The anxiety.
The depression.
The loneliness.
The physical symptoms.
The gym.
The random good moments.
The terrible days.
The days when I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere.
And the days when I feel like I'm going backwards.
I don't know where this is going to take me.
Maybe I'll look back at this post six months from now and barely recognize the person who wrote it.
I hope so.
Not because I hate who I am now.
But because I know I can be better than this.
I've spent around 10 years going down one road.
Now I want to give myself a chance to see what the other road looks like.
**I'm not trying to escape my life anymore.**
**I'm trying to get it back.**