It’s been a hard week. I’m counting from last Wednesday. I haven’t been sleeping much. I haven’t run since Saturday cause of a minor running injury. I’m falling behind in every aspect of my life, it seems. It felt like Tuesday was a month long.
Finally, as I sat at my desk today at work, trying to silence the pounding in my head, I felt myself hitting a breaking point. I had pushed myself way past mental health limits. I was trying to be too much for too many. I could hear everybody telling me not to spread myself too thin. Whoops.
I thought about opening a Mozilla Firefox tab and plugging one ear with some upbeat music – the kind that always helps 180 my mood. And now I’m realizing that that’s part of what got me into this mess in the first place.
Too intent on “remaining positive” and “plowing through” and “dealing with the emotional side of things…later” had beat me to the ground. And now, I just wanted to let myself feel sad and tired and stressed.
I zombie-crawled through the train home, letting my podcast carry me to my apartment. Within minutes, I face planted onto my mattress, wrapping my grey sheet around me. I needed to turn off the noise.
I laid there for 30 minutes, in and out of sleep, thinking and dreaming and wondering why I had to be a 23-year-old who acts like a stressed out CEO.
Earlier at work, I had thought about writing about feeling overwhelmed but turning it into a positive thing – as I do with most blog posts. But then I remembered the conversations that have beat heavy on my heart in recent months – the idea of why do we wait until things are okay to talk about them? Why don’t we ask for help or talk about the hard stuff when it’s happening?
I love everything I do with The Smile Project and I value the integrity of this organization so much. That’s why I refuse to ever play into the “things are okay” idea when they actually aren’t.
Will things be okay? Absolutely. Will I probably feel a little better after a healthy dinner, some ice on my leg, and a good night’s sleep? It will certainly be a start.
Could I do myself a favor and start the healing process with some feel-good, girl power songs? I could. But I don’t need that right now. For once, I just need to sit in the silence. For now, I just want to experience the tinges of hollow sadness and worn-down exhaustion. Tonight, I need to listen to every inch of my body that is crying for a moments rest.
So I can’t tonight.
But tomorrow is a new day. And Thursday has always been my favorite day of the week.
Love always,
Liz
