Teetering in my self discovery....

“When you have a sense of your own identity and a vision of where you want to go in your life, you then have the basis for reaching out to the world and going after your dreams for a better life.” -- Stedmen Graham

So I've already broken my promise to myself, to write daily.  I'm going to try not to give myself a guilt trip, because that's what I do.  Due to my own self critical mind, yesterday started off with a guilt trip and went spiraling downhill from there.

I wish I knew exactly the moment where everything went south for the day, and maybe it was the night before, when I was reading old blogs from over a year ago.  Actually, I think that's exactly what happened & when I was reading past posts, I couldn't believe how sad I sounded.  So, after crying over the past, I fell asleep and woke up with a headache and a crick in my neck.  No Bueno.  Not only that, but my special someone woke up with a migraine, so neither of us was off to a good start.  We said our goodbyes in a less then ordinary way, not as loving as usual, and that's when the guilt started to set in.  This guilt, led to a depressed state of near comatose, where I actually continued to lay in bed for another 3 hours.  Maybe I wouldn't have done that if I really needed to be somewhere. I had planned on meeting a friend for coffee, followed by some yoga, which I bailed on both and instead laid in my own misery until I was forced to get up at the last possible moment.  Guilt Guilt Guilt.  I know I do it to myself, I know it's happening and I know it's completely unreasonable, but my ego somehow thrives off of feeling sad.

Long story short, I sulked in my guilt all day until a friend called me out on it after work, by saying,"You're not happy," and that's when the tears started.  Darn tears.  Why am I crying?  I have no idea.  It's such a weird feeling when you really have no idea why you are upset.  Either way, it's times like these that I'm so grateful for the people that surround me.  I'm lucky and I know it.  After toying with the idea that I had control over our evening festivities, I decided on pizza, river gawking and ice cream with my two best man friends.

While we were sitting by the river I realized that a tree was covered with salmon fly larva skeletons, which gave me the creeps, but as I think about it now I realize how it's a metaphor.  How can a living thing change form so quickly? Yesterday I was a caterpillar, moving through life slowly, afraid of getting stepped on, and today I'm a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.  So cliche, I know, but how weird of a realization.  I feel great today.  It's as if I had to go through whatever that was yesterday, some sort of loss of control, in order to find a little bit more balance today....

Tears or no tears, sulking in my own misery or not, Josh (my special man lover) brought to my attention that I keep dwelling on how I was feeling a year ago, and he's exactly right.  I got so sucked into how I was feeling then, that I actually thought that it was "coming back" and it scared the hell out of me, when really, why would I feel like that right now?  My life has been doing nothing but getting better this past year.  My biggest obstacle now is my own mind, keeping it on track and reminding myself daily, not to dwell in the stormy past, but to soak up the sunshine that's coming my way.

Finding Balance

"Watch the sunrise at least once a year, put a lot of marshmallows in your hot chocolate, lie on your back and look at the stars, never buy a coffee table you can't put your feet on, never pass up a chance to jump on a trampoline, don't overlook life's small joys while searching for the big ones."

 -H. Jackson Brown Jr.

 

Hello again my long lost friends!  Or has it been myself who's been lost?  Either way, I've found myself on the other side of "crazy", now happy, yet feeling somewhat unbalanced.  Could it be true?  You find what you are looking for and then something else falls through the cracks? Who knows, but on my own life journey, I feel like I've made it through the current storm and now I just need to pick up the few remaining pieces.

I'm going to just throw this out there, in case the following words are awful.  I've started several blogs this past year and couldn't finish them enough to publish, so this one is getting put out there, regardless.  I think part of my writers block is the fear of people not responding positively to what I have to say.  I'm going to go ahead and knock that wall down, because it's blocking my path.

I know I've been gone for awhile, and who knows if anyone would really want to go back to reading my plain old blog, I'm no longer chasing some fairytale dream that involves a prisoner.  I'm no longer threatening to pack all my things and leave my home forever.  I feel a little more settled and I know I'm exactly where I belong.  It's a balance issue.  And in order to regain my balance, I'm going to go back to a few things that I've lost along the way, first off, my writing.

I've completely lost my drive to write, which is so weird, since I use to get so much from it.  I use to thrive from telling my stories of my monotonous life.  I also learned, from writing, how much other people could relate to the things that I say.  Maybe I need to put it all out there, word vomit about my life again, so that anyone who wants to, can see exactly what my life is made up of.  I think one of my biggest weaknesses is not being completely honest with who I am as a person.  I constantly worry about people judging me, when I know in my heart, my biggest critic is looking back at me in the mirror.

I've found, more and more, I'll catch glimpses of what other people must see when they cross paths with me.  Not a bad looking woman, in pretty decent shape for a early thirty year old.  A little young at heart and what seems to be a bit on the silly side, but fun to be around.  I saw at my recent shindig I threw for myself for my birthday, just how many different walks of life I could immerse myself in.  My friends are what make me who I am, and I've always known that I make them easily, and when they are all brought together, well, you would have had to be there, but I think they mixed as good as it could.

When I'm having a bad day, I look in the mirror and see this haggard face, tired eyes, out of shape, old body.  I hear myself say terrible terrible things.  I know it's not right, because when I'm having a good day, my image is so much different.  How can life feel so great one moment and then plummet to something so dark the next?  I'm still trying to find an answer to this question.

For those of you who have followed my blog in the past, I'm still not on anti depressants, and I still struggle to find my happiness from day to day, but refuse to fall back on modern day "happy pills" to help me.  I believe that we all have what we need on the inside, to be happy and fulfilled.  I took a good chunk of time off from working out, including my obsessive running.  I'm getting back into it again, but I do find myself tired some days, and am learning to listen to what my body is saying.  I was supposed to run 10 miles today, but I chose to take a nap, so far it feels like a relatively good decision, although, since I'm feeling like a chunky monkey, I knew a good long run would shock that right out of me, but that's okay.  There's always tomorrow and Yoga is happening in the a.m.

I am proud to say that I did make it one year without alcohol.  I almost said one year sober, but my mother would disagree with the whole "sober" claim, since I did find myself using a little green substance about 9 months in to my sobriety, which I now give a little credit to some relief in anxiety.  Either way, I made my one year  without alcohol, and for someone who had been drinking half her life, I'd say it was a pretty solid goal to achieve.  This being said, I have proclaimed to stop drinking again, at least for 30 days.  I promise to be completely sober for the next month.

Why am I telling you this?  Well because I feel like I need to put it out there so that I'm held responsible.  And my reasoning for "sobering" up aren't what you are thinking.  No, I haven't fallen off the wagon again.  I don't drink away my sorrows, since I really don't have much to be sorry for.  I'm in a healthy relationship that has gotten a little too comfortable for me.  15 pounds worth.  GRRRRRRRRRRR  Those darn vanity pounds are back, and I swear to god that I'm going to gain control over this.  It's a little silly and vain, but I've found myself feeling so terrible about myself and it's all because my shorts don't fit and I feel like I have a muffin top.  Why is it so hard to be female?  All I want is to love myself in the way that I know I deserve to be loved.  I know that until I find control and balance over this struggling self image issue, I wont be the best partner/spouse to someone, or the best parent I could be, and at this point in my life I think about that A TON.

That's enough to chew on for awhile.  I'm going to try my best to write every day in order to keep myself accountable.  So for today, day 1, it's been a good carbo-loading-day-off-from-work sort of day.  Listening to the rain out my window and contemplating where my life was one year ago, two years ago.  Whew.  Things have changed and I have allot to be grateful for.