I need this blog today. My brain chatter is not going well, as in, it is not going well for me - the chatter itself is loud and unkind. Sigh! I have lived this for years, and only once it started to shut up and quieten that I realised that it was an odd and uncomfortable guest in my head. One who had to be firmly sent packing, but one who has beaten the path down to my door and comes back whenever I am not guarding it well.
I'm trying to remember what was the start of the end of these voices, I think I once told Mum about how the voices started to quieten... ah yes, I remember now, it is when I started saying back to the voice: I am doing my best and my best is enough. When I figured out what that phrase meant for me - and I did that on this blog. It keeps the guilt and the fear away.
Lately, I have been very tired. Like having a couple of naps during the day kind of tired. There is very good reason for that.
Mummy was visiting and I wanted to organise the house, so everyday after work, we would pull everything out and think hard about what to throw and what to keep and then where to keep it. It was hard work, though it sounds simple enough on paper. But my smart watch showed that I had physically burnt a lot of calories doing it (about 6 times my usual active calories* on the day before Mummy was leaving and my cousins were coming over for the Easter break). But how hard can it be to pull things out and put fewer of them back - I can't explain it but very hard. That went on for about 2 months. 2 months**!!
Then my cousins came and we had a grand time, we played rounds and rounds of clue. We ate delicious food. We went swimming. And we fixed the bathroom tiles. My little nephew and my doggo slept in my bed.
When they left I was wiped out. WIPED OUT. I don't think I have ever been so tired in my life before. I sat on the sofa and I couldn't move for a whole day. Things only got slightly better in the next few days.It didn't help that we had to wait for 48 hours before grouting the tiles, and after I did that after work, not only did I again got late in sleeping, the fact that I cannot have a shower at home is painful. After about a week I realised that my recovering strategy needed improvements - for me that involves tracking my sleep, my food and my productivity. I started that a few days ago. It is helping, I think the cumulative sleep is helping too.
But all of this was making me feel guilty and with guilt I fear I am sabotaging myself and then comes fear, and then comes the unkind chattering in my head and that is LOUD. And UNKIND.
Now writing this has helped. I am doing my best and I cannot do any better. And my best is enough.
*usual doesn't mean a usual work day - smart watches do not measure calories burnt by your brain while sitting on a chair. By usual I mean any day I spent doing either one set of rigorous exercise after work or a weekend day spent pottering about most day without sitting much.
**how does it take 2 months to organise a small apartment that belongs to one person!? but i hadn't been able to do it for over 10 years, the last time I had a tidy house was when I was 29 years old and I am now 41. And finally my house is a sigh away from tidy. I should know, I lived in tidy spaces for most of my life.
In those 12 years, however, I had a disastrous marriage of about 2 years, another year or so of a very exhausting divorce. And in the time that I could have spent grieving and tidying my space I had to troll thru my bank statements to prove how I supported him during our time together - it was shit, no one should be punished so badly for doing good. Then moving houses a few different times. Getting my head fixed after with a few different therapists. Getting my finances fixed. And because some times untidy houses show happy hearts, adopt a gorgeous puppy who loved digging into potted plants and tearing cardboard boxes and his toys to pieces. Spill his food and water. And most importantly not having enough storage in the apartment, that I finally got built last year around September.
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