I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. Not literally, but might as well have been. I slept in wayyy more than I ever do (probably due to me going from class this weekend from 8-5 and not getting much sleep at night), I woke up with a headache, my eyes were puffy, and my hair was ridiculous. Ok, well my hair is always ridiculous when I wake up. I managed to drop and spill multiple things before I could even get a drop of coffee to my lips. I realized I needed to start laundry but then realized that I didn't have enough quarters to use the dryer. I knew that tomorrow I will be starting a job that I accepted out of desperation, but don't really want. And today I was going to go and apply for the job that I really do want. Needless to say, not a Tony the Tiger start to my day.
I finally managed to get coffee made and sat on the couch, and turned on the T.V. to Food Network to watch cooking shows like I have been every morning during my unemployed weeks here. When I first came back to Portland, the channel that I hadn't had access to all year brought me joy, I love cooking shows, and even Guy Fieri was starting to become someone I didn't hate during my long days alone at home. But I sat down this morning and realized that I didn't actually want to watch it. I was watching it to distract me from my own anxiety now. If I was locked into Ina Garten making a platter of finger sandwiches, I wasn't thinking so hard about how freaked out I am. But pushing the anxious thoughts away just made me feel worse. Kind of like procrastinating homework. The longer you avoid it, the more it distorts into something way worse than the actual work it actually is. So, I saw that my anxiety is actually my homework. Like, the kind homework assignment of a research paper that takes many long hours of sorting through information and feelings and citing sources (always hated that part). I need to sort through the information that is real, work through my feelings and match them properly with the facts of how things really are, and cite my sources of what's causing all that anxiety. <--Ok that's at least ten metaphor-for-life points.
I realized that I haven't really thought much of myself lately. What's up with that? I'm awesome. Funny how you can go from a strong confident person to a pile of WTF in a relatively short period of time. I also think it's funny that when I was younger, I always felt like once I reached that strong, confident stage of my life, I would be able to stay there and that nothing would be able to knock me down. Like it was a destination that, if I could just get there, I would be able to become a permanent resident of.
"Hi, I'm HaLee, and I am the mayor of my own wonderful, beautiful, concrete, confident town, and every day is Independence Day!"
Har har har.
The difference in me being young and me being old as balls now is that I now know that it doesn't work that way. Those gorgeous highs of feeling like nothing can get me down always inevitably dip back down to needing to work on myself again. And by work on myself, I don't mean physically, I mean emotionally and intellectually. The problem with my emotional framework, is that I get stuck on thinking it means physically sometimes. I noticed today that I have been disliking myself these past few weeks. Not liking what my hair is doing, feeling like it always needs to look a certain way to be likable to strangers (yeah totally logical right?). Being kind of pissed off at my body for losing the tan I was able to maintain all through the year via a tropical country and summer in Idaho, also for not being able to shake off the 10 pounds that are left from me stuffing my face in said tropical country. Being annoyed at my skin for not gracefully changing with the seasons. Annoyed at my- ok well you get the point.
SO. I turned off the T.V. I sat on the futon and turned on some music. And just drank my coffee. I did that thing you always do in yoga class where you breathe in and out deeply, "inhaling in light and love..... and exhaling bad energy." I cried a little and then I felt better.
I know I have the tools to get through this. If I don't then what the eff has this year been about? Maybe I just need to sit down and re-read my blog and remember that this crap I am going through is the same emotional crap that I went through many times before, and that the cycle really needs to come to an end.
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