THE SUPERMARKET: The Moment That Changed My Life

I can't move.

I'm stuck in my car and I've managed to remove the seatbelt. My mind attempts to invite my body to get out of the vehicle. I've not been in an accident and my car isn't upside down. I'm parked outside a supermarket in my home city of Reykjavik, Iceland.

Even though I can't move my legs, my eyes clock normal people entering and exiting the supermarket. It's Tuesday or Wednesday, either way, it doesn't matter, because it's a weekday, and it's supposed to be a normal day.  Everything looks normal outside the car in the parking lot, but inside my head, everything is the opposite of normal.

My body doesn't respond to my desire to get out of the car. I am suddenly consumed by nostalgic feelings - back to the time when I could just walk into the supermarket and pick out an apple, orange, or soda - like a normal person on a weekday.

This is the moment that changed everything in my life. It’s a moment that took place back in 2015. This moment sliced my life into good and bad pieces.

The bad was that I was experiencing a nervous breakdown of sorts, it was a crippling feeling, and I was consumed with anxiety and overwhelmed just by thinking about going into the supermarket on a goddam weekday. I’m not sure where this came from, but for a while, I’d been noticing my nervous system complaining months before it manifested as a momentary meltdown in my car.

The good was to come years later after this moment. Because from this moment onwards I started to do things differently. I started to re-communicate with myself. What was my nervous system trying to tell me and why didn’t I hear or mark its warnings?

I learned that my nervous system doesn’t speak my language, it doesn’t speak in words.

These questions would lead me on a journey that would take a few years. And though I’m still constantly developing my communication with my nervous system, I’m learning new things about it every day.

I learned that my nervous system doesn’t speak my language, it doesn’t speak in words. It works on different levels, and the great news for me, when I started this recommunication was that these ‘different levels' were actually something I could hear, see and feel. At this moment, this breakdown was severe. But by some fortune, I was able to find my feet again. It would be a very slow gradual path that is still paving through me.

These key elements, hearing, seeing, and feeling would not only be my guide into this new life, but they’d also help me to rediscover my approach to my passion; making films and telling stories - and develop a new passion, to teach filmmaking, writing and sharing my creative experience.

Today, because of this moment I write differently, I read differently and most importantly I listen to my body differently. Thanks to this moment, I started to take real care of the signals my nervous system uses to communicate through my body.

Every time I go to the supermarket I'm filled with gratitude, I kiss the apples and oranges in my mind and hug the soda.