"Breath in, breathe out
Tell me all of your doubt
And everybody bleeds this way, just the same.
Breath in, breathe out
Move on and break down
If everyone goes away, I will stay.
We push and pull
And we fall down sometimes
But I'm not letting go, you hold the other line."
-Matt Kearney
This past week has just been painful, and for no real good reason on my part. My life is fine; I have two jobs, I live in a house which is less cold than the outdoors (though it seems pretty close sometimes), I have good friends, I have no deadly health problems, and I have a bright new adventure to begin on in a month.
BUT
I've been feeling sick to my stomach since Thanksgiving for no apparent reason, I feel up in the air and completely ungrounded mentally and emotionally, my self-esteem has tanked, and my best friend has been doing quite poorly and I'm too many states away to help and I feel like I've been channeling his pain.
Granted, most of these "buts" can be attributed to the fact that I haven't taken my anxiety medication in longer than I can remember (this wasn't a choice; I just forget to take it because my schedule fluctuates all the time), and it is, as my mom would say, my "own fault."
So anyway, I've been feeling pretty crappy lately, and it all hit me at once last night after a shift at Hogan's during which I slipped, cracked my head on the floor and spilled beer cheese soup all over myself and then had to walk home in a blizzard. It actually turned out to be a good thing that I walked because it gave me a chance to evaluate my situation and figure out how to deal with it.
At first I felt like there was this enormous pressure in my throat, radiating up through my head, and I couldn't tell if I wanted to burst into tears or scream. I just felt so screwed up and unable to do anything about it. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a fix-it person. If you just come to vent to me about how you feel, I want to quit talking and take action to make everything better. This feeling of impotence, a feeling of not being able to do ANYTHING to make myself better, was awful.
Anyway, after being trapped in this crushing vortex for a few blocks I began to breathe again and with the breath came the early tendrils of peace reaching through my brain. By the time I got home I had breathed all of the anger and frustration out of my body in big clouds of freezing steam, and everything else came rushing out in tears. It was very cathartic.
This morning I woke up tired, and with a large bump on the back of my head from that slip, but otherwise feeling like things were going to be ok. I made it through the longest night of the year, and it was painful, but I emerged on the light side feeling ready to make some changes.
My stomach still hurts, I still don't feel quite like myself, and I'm still worrying about Gabe,
BUT
I remembered to take my medicine today, I feel like I've regained the strength to begin to change bad habits, get back into yoga and meditation, count all the little things I'm thankful for, and find the moments of peace in my life that have been way too few and far between in the last month.
Things are looking up again, and I'm thankful for that. To begin, all you have to do is
"Smile, breathe and go slowly." – Thich Nhat Hanh
