Holy crap, now it’s been a really long time. And an unbelievable amount of bullshit has happened in the past three and a half months. I came back from paradise to a world that was sideways and felt like the Twilight Zone. I went into vacation thinking I was over my struggles from the beginning of the year… and then I was stuck home with kids in a world gone mad and all of the cycles and all of the difficulties started all over again.
For someone who knows how to be positive and have a positive mindset, who knows that your mindset will determine your reality and therefore it’s really in your best interest to to keep your chin up and make the best of any situation… I really fucking struggled. One day I would think I was perfectly fine and I was going to be okay, and then 10 minutes later I was bawling to myself trying to help one of my kids with their homework or simply trying to get my own work done, or … anything!
My introverted people-adverse husband thought I was nuts. #sigh
And here’s what I had to keep telling myself: there is nothing wrong with me.
What I was feeling was completely justified considering the situation. What I was feeling was for me and me alone, and I didn’t need to explain it to anyone. What I was feeling was based on my own personality and my own experiences, which was all based on 40+ years of life. MY life. Not anybody else’s life. Therefore, there was no way that anybody else could tell me that what I was feeling or going through was right or wrong or anything of the kind.
One of my biggest problems is that I kept comparing myself to other people, and how they were coping with the isolation or just the way that the world was being. It seems like several others in my inner circles were doing quite all right, and then that made me feel bad because I wasn’t doing quite all right. So I felt like I had to put on a happy face and do better with it, when really I was struggling and that was just the truth, plain and simple. My truth. Not theirs, not anyone’s. Mine.
So I stopped putting on the happy face. I got done what needed to get done for my kids and for my family. I retreated a bit, because I just didn’t want to deal with it – I didn’t want to deal with anything, I didn’t want to pretend like everything was going to be okay, I didn’t want to pretend like life was grand. Life was anything but grand. Life was fucked up. Life still is fucked up. But at least now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
You see, I’m a finish line chaser. It doesn’t matter if I’m running or doing an obstacle course race, or pushing a deadline at work, or doing a work out that’s a specific amount of time. I am a finish line crosser. I am the type that prefers to get things done. I love to cross items off a to-do list. I love that sense of accomplishment when something is finished. This whole situation… There is no Finish line. We don’t know when it’s going to be over. And for someone like me, that’s a very big problem.
And again I have to remind myself: there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with me being that way. It is a part of what makes me who and how I am… and overall, I am a good thing.
Ultimately I think this process started during my seasonal depression. For the first time in many years, learning to embrace that dark side of myself and not fight it was the beginning of telling myself that I am a good thing, and that I am good enough… Even if I’m not always perfect, or I’m not always cheery, or I don’t always do #allthethings . After all, I’ve been doing allthethings for most of my life – something that started when I was just a kid. So it’s kind of been ingrained in me all along. So when I came across something like the seasonal depression, or the struggles with the Twilight Zone of the world, I really felt bad that I couldn’t still do allthethings and get through it. That somehow, having those difficulties made me not okay.
There is nothing wrong with me.
I’m simply shedding another layer, a layer of armor that I have held for too long, and finally coming to terms with the amount of love, light, motion, and energy that I truly hold inside. That, however, is another post entirely. So I’ll stop for now. Tune in soon.