How many times have I said that in my life? A lot.
Sometimes it’s because it’s a truly horrific day. A funeral. Having your pet put to sleep. Getting unexpected devastating news. But then there are other days when it’s just tough, without needing some big meaning behind it.
This is one of those days.
A promise I made to myself is to keep writing and speaking, no matter what. Even when I don’t feel like it. Even when I’ve got nothing great to say, and even when I’m having a day like this.
Because I know we all get them, and of course, they can stay with us much longer than a day. There have been so many times when, for whatever reason, I’ve woken up and felt like shit, and if that becomes a daily occurrence, positivity goes down the toilet.
I think this is part of the human experience though. We can find ourselves for days, weeks, months, or much longer in truly hard periods. Sleep deprivation, ongoing illness, looking after elderly parents, feeling constantly fatigued, knowing that something is wrong with the way you’re feeling but the doctor can’t seem to do anything to help, a challenging home environment, demanding children, relationship breakdown, financial difficulties… the list goes on.
There is, to me, a difference here between someone who’s just letting life happen to them, getting pissed off about their circumstances but not doing anything at all to change them, and someone who is doing things but it’s going to take time for things to change. For others, particularly with chronic illness, it can be grieving for what is no more and finding a new way of being.
I wanted to acknowledge those different aspects of why life can get hard for periods. Of course, there are so many more, and that’s not really what this is meant to be about.
This is more to speak to those who are in a rough patch, because whenever I’ve been there, slogging through with no energy, feeling burnt out, my brain latches on to: this is how life is now.
Which is terrifying in itself, because I look ahead and think, but I’m barely scraping through this week. How the fuck am I going to manage at this level of depletion for the rest of my life?
I know my brain can’t be trusted at times like this. A tired brain can compress everything down and come up with a very narrow conclusion, and if we believe that conclusion, that this is permanent, then suddenly it doesn’t feel like there are many options left. Sometimes that can narrow even further into one circulating thought and, if you’ve ever been there, you’ll know what I mean.
So this is to say: you don’t know what’s round the corner.
How terribly clichéd that sounds, but you really don’t.
There have been more times than I’ll ever remember when my brain has told me this is permanent, or I’ve fucked things up so badly that it’ll never get any better than this, or this level of energy is all I’ve got now and it’ll only get worse. You can say goodbye to your dreams.
Then something has lifted. Or I’ve managed to push something forward despite the way I was feeling. Or something really good actually has been round that corner. If I’d acted on the permanence my brain was telling me was real, I’d never have got to experience any of it.
This blog is a real-life example of that, as I started this having one of those weeks, and I’m ending it in a very different place.
For me, I do believe when I go through periods like this, my body is trying to tell me something, because there is something I’m doing, something I’m ignoring, or something in my life isn’t right and I need to pull up my big girl pants and do that difficult thing I’m avoiding. Often that message is something like: Life has got in the way, please come back to me. I need to feel connected to you.
Although, just to be clear, it doesn’t actually say it like that.
This is what I’ve come to realise, and it’s what I’ve seen in others too. We can get so incredibly disconnected from ourselves, and that can be a very lonely place.
So what does getting connected with ourselves even mean? Maybe it starts with some gentleness in our thoughts. It’s okay. I’ll be okay. Let’s just focus on one thing at a time. Something to calm the stressed, worn-thin brain.
There are plenty of self-care practices I could rattle off here, but that’s not really the point. Think more about soothing and consoling yourself. Treating yourself as someone who matters, even if it feels like no one else is treating you as if you do.
And then there’s connecting to something greater. You don’t have to be religious or ‘spiritual’ for this one. The idea of handing over some of what you’re carrying to something bigger than yourself appears in programmes such as Alcoholics Anonymous, and I can understand why. Sometimes just allowing yourself to feel that there is a greater force supporting you, and that you don’t have to figure out your entire life right now, can take some of the pressure off.
Because you can’t figure it all out right now anyway.
Whatever helps you reconnect with yourself, and perhaps with something greater than yourself too, can give you some distance from that narrow brain lie.
Because how you are feeling now is not permanent.
