It’s the second weekend of 2019 and it’s been a lazy one. I’m sat bundled up on the sofa decked out complete in Harry Potter attire, a thick blanket, millions of pillows and a lovely cup of coffee:
Everyone in the house is ill but I seem to have got off lightly with this bug, having only been sent home early from work once this week and I blame that partly on having had vaccinations early that morning. I’ve taken this weekend for me to recover properly. Usually Sundays are my least favourite day of the week but I’ve spent so many of them over the last couple of months with friends, family, in recovery, or doing something enjoyable that I may have started to change the way I feel about the Sabbath day. Sometimes the best way to deal with something that has negative connotations is to create something new and better to associate with it, rather than burying your head in the sand and avoiding it.
Starting as I mean to go on
2019 has already been quite busy and I like to feel that I’ve started this year on the right foot, coming into the year with good friends, feeling positive about life and FINALLY getting my passport which means I can start to plan some adventures – I am seriously excited for this year, regardless of the many challenges that await me. Yet if you had asked me how I was feeling about life a couple of weeks ago, I would have told you something very different. I was experiencing extreme burn out from a pretty rough December and a pretty rough year – I had hit a wall that I honestly wasn’t sure I could get over. I 100% despaired, caught between a looming sense of hopelessness after yet more bad news and frustration that I was crumbling despite having survived a challenging year, but there are times when no matter how much you just want to keep going despite your world imploding, your brain and body just exclaim, ‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!’ and all you can do is feel all of those awful feelings. I was facing a week and a half of no work, something I have never had in my working life. Up until the last couple of days of work, I was surprisingly excited for Christmas and New Year, with lots of plans to look forward to and many MANY lie-ins to have. But Christmas is a time of year I usually struggle with and with everything that had been happening, I started to panic at the prospect of all of this time with no work to lose myself in. Thankfully(?) I had a lot of Christmas prep to do which afforded me no time to let my mind worry, but my body made every day a trial, with constant crippling chest pain, fitful sleep and always on the verge of tears – I cried a lot over the Christmas period. I ended up away for a few days with friends to see in the new year and it was definitely what I needed. I mean, it’s hard not to feel a little better when you get to chill out in a little place near the sea, wood burner going, while you’re curled up with a good book and a lovely dog!
A year of loss, of change and of growth
More often than not when I post on The Anxious Extrovert, I am reflecting on how I may have been feeling a year ago or how I would have once responded to a situation, and I have found that TAE has been great for tracking my progress with my mental health, which I guess has been part of the point of this blog. 2018 was the ultimate test of everything and some of my posts have talked about the payoff of CBT and therapy, as well as lessons I have learned just through experience and a better understanding of wellbeing: I have said it in a previous post that had the events of the last year occurred a few years earlier, I would not have coped. When I finally hit that mental wall near the end of the year, one of the few things that helped me get through it was the fact that I HAD survived what feels like the craziest year of my life, and much of it was possible thanks to all that I had done to work on myself.
The last year taught me much about loss and grief. I’m no stranger to these things, having been born to people who had me later in their lives, and sadly losing friends too soon in their own. Last year was a sad year as we lost my aunt Angela, and Dot, a friend who I had worked with for nearly 5 years at Asda – but nothing could prepare me for losing my mum. I’m not an expert on this, I learn something new about this process every day. What I can say with confidence is that is an experience that is unique to every person, every persons relationship is different, and that the 5 stages of grief are complete rubbish (for me, anyway). Every day I think about it, sometimes briefly, sometimes I recall everything so vividly that I am flooded with emotion as though I had just heard the news all over again. Sometimes it comes with no warning, or is an unexpected consequence. Very recently I had my passport interview and they asked a couple of questions about my mum – as I was heading to work afterwards, I was suddenly emotional. I also freaked out a few months ago when I thought I had a lost a receipt: the receipt was of the things I bought for her on the very last day I saw her and the thought of losing that piece of paper makes my heart hurt. The relationship we had was not a simple one and I have a few things to work through, which will take time, what I didn’t expect was to feel the way that I have and still do. I never understood the idea that grief becomes a companion, it never truly leaves you, and when this first began I certainly would not have described it as a companion! More like a malignant growth that fills your heart and mind with shock, pain, and constant reminders of what you have lost. Now I am coming around the idea as I learn to accept the moments when I suddenly think about the loss of my mum and the memories I have of her. It’s a process and I think it’s one that I will always be figuring out.
Loss can have an impact that goes far beyond grief. I didn’t suddenly wake up a new person with a whole new perspective on life, but I definitely feel differently about a lot of things. My priorities have changed and I feel more determined than ever to life live as fully as I can. Even though I still have the same every day struggle with my anxiety, I have a renewed determination to not let it rule my life (which is easier said than done some days). I’ve made some difficult decisions that I have struggled with and most likely will for a long time, but I am lucky to have wonderful friends and family that have and continue to support me. I will be completely honest and say that there are things that I cannot talk about right now. It’s a little bit because I have no idea how I would put it into words but it’s mainly because I cannot until things run their course. When I can I will because it’s such a powerful subject, not only for me but for so many others that I truly believe need to hear this story – it all comes back to WHY I do this blog. It may have started out as something to help me as I was nearing the other side of a dark time with my mental health, but it was born from the desire to share my experiences to help others.
It’s not all doom and gloom
Last year was hard and yet there has been so much good come out of it. After a difficult start to the year with my anxiety, I had decided to try some counselling again but I didn’t feel like I clicked with the counselor or that the sessions were doing anything for me. One thing she did do was to encourage me to take some time off work and use that time to think a little more about what I wanted to do. Well, after that I started a new job and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made! I learned a lot in my one year at The Coventry but moving to BCU has been a really positive move. I work with a great team who I am happy to call my Ask family and they have been such a pillar of support, more than I think they know! The super early mornings are tough but I like going to work, and when my mum first passed away, I wanted to be there, so I think that says a lot! I feel so much closer to my friends and to some of my family – something I have struggled with for many years is a sense of being disconnected and not really belonging anywhere, but my friends stepped up in amazing fashion this year: for the first time ever I didn’t feel alone. I have felt so loved and it’s so much more than I deserve, but it’s heartbreaking that it took something so awful to finally break that feeling. I cannot say enough about how amazing these human beings have been and I could not have got through everything without them. One of my friends got married and it was such a wonderful day! Another friend had her first baby, though I have sadly not yet met him. I’ve met new people who have helped me learn a little more about myself and what I might want from life… 2018 was a roller-coaster of a year but I am excited for 2019, even if it will also have it’s fair share of difficulties.
So what next? I have no real New Years resolutions because I never stick to them – I’m trying to do Dry January at the moment but I came very close to swiping one of my housemates beers earlier so I’m not sure how much longer that will last! But I’m turning 30 this year and you’re supposed to make a big deal out of that apparently. I had hoped to go to Australia for 4 weeks to celebrate the fact that my best friend (she lives out there) and I were both turning 30 but sadly I can’t do that anymore, so I still got my passport sorted and I plan to go to Vietnam for my birthday instead! I might not have resolutions but I have big plans to challenge myself this year and this is one of the biggest ones I can think of – I’m sure it’s a great idea as an anxious person to just go thousands of miles away for my first ever proper trip abroad… at least it will give me something interesting to blog about on here! I’m still learning lessons and I am sure I will have plenty more. I have a fair few things I want to do this year but I will save that for my next post.
Before I wrap up the first post of 2019 (woo), I just want to share this song. It came on the day before I got the news about my mum, as my friend and I were in the garden enjoying the beginning of what would be one of the best summers we have had in years. When we heard the line ‘Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good,’ we shared a look – I had opened up about my mum after she had gone into hospital and she had lost her mum several years ago. I had no idea that I would get that call the next day. Ever since then, I listen to this song in a whole different way, but I think it will always be relevant… they’re only wrong about one thing – my hair will be fine when I get to 40!
The Anxious Extrovert 