I went into Christmas completely overwhelmed, moved everything out of my parents’ house and started a new year feeling miserable. A sparkly friend sent a New Year message that said something about banishing any ideas of giving up and instead, doing what ever we want to do. My eyes leaked and I sighed.
“But what I want is to give up,” I complained to my daughter.
She thought that was sad but I think it was more of an acknowledgement of how I’d like to be able to stop trying so hard.
I had coffee with a friend who is having a tough time and we talked about going back to work after something that has profoundly changed you. It’s a difficult choice. Do you wait until you are completely ready? Do you go back and accept that you, maybe, won’t be as good? Although I had a couple of months off, I chose the second option because I was in denial about how broken I was and because I had already accepted that I would never be the same again. Somehow, you have to get used to living with the new you.
This has been hard work for me. Actually, it’s been totally exhausting. I’m like the little anxious clownfish in Finding Nemo. ‘Just keep swimming.’ I swim, I walk, I do daily yoga, I think about stuff, I write about stuff. I panic if someone asks me to do something because I can’t refuse and I know I won’t do it well. I panic if I feel in the slightest bit trapped. I panic when I smell certain smells and I panic if the world is too loud.
So, I’ve gone back to work after the Christmas break, where I’m trapped in my room by a life saving skills course in the hall (which is making me anxious because the pressure on small children to be responsible for keeping everyone alive feels too much), where people ask me to do things (funny that, when you are at work), in a building that has bizarrely developed a smell of death over the holidays (rats in air ducts, leaking pipes have all been blamed), with people who are generally over-excitable (teachers are just as bad as children). It hasn’t been the best combination.
I was hoping that selling the house would be the light at the end of the tunnel and I would be able to relax. Things are more complicated than that and it turns out that I am probably just going to have to keep working at it.
There are lots of positive things and noticing them is what keeps us going.
When you see all the overly positive memes on social media they can feel irritating, especially when they seem to come from people who you suspect aren’t happy and positive all the time. Just as people who constantly whinge are irritating.
We need to recognise that we all have both. All the time. Looking for the positive things when you are low is a way of getting back into balance.
Here is a list of some of the lovely things in my life.
1. The Long Suffering Husband
2. Great kids and my sister happy
3. A dog, who is still refusing to sit in the same room as me but is always pleased to see my flute pupils and tells me about his day when I get in.
4. Birds
5. Yoga
6. Swimming
7. Books
8. Sparkly friends and looking forward to pizza (especially those who accuse you of being the light at the end of their tunnel)
9. Youth Orchestra and our 20th anniversary plans (very exciting and the best way to spend Friday evening with the best people)
10. Being able to use work as an excuse to run around Apple trees, drinking juice, toasting the trees, banging instruments and singing.
11. Saturday sausage bake from the Archers cookbook, cooked by the LSH
12. The Archers and corresponding tweet-a-long.
13. Made up rude words on Twitter
14. Memories
15. Writing. This blog has cheered me up I hope it has been balanced enough not to irritate you.
There is light at the end of the tunnel.
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