A Brush with Anxiety

Hello, internet! This has been the longest I’ve been away from the blog and I’ve missed it so much. It feels good to be back.

The reason for my prolonged absence is that life got crazy, which is a lame excuse for a blogger not to blog. There are dozens of posts out there about how consistency is huge and everyone gets busy and if you want to be a serious blogger you’ve got to prioritize.

But that’s what I’m saying. Life got crazy. Not busy, but absolutely crazy bonkers. I didn’t just disappear from the blog, I disappeared from my social circles, from my hobbies, from anything that wasn’t work, and it got bad.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I’m pretty sure I had a brush with anxiety in the past couple months. I think it’s beyond normal stress levels to want to burst into tears just standing in a room, or to have constant stomach pain, or to not want to get out of bed when you’ve never felt that before, or to walk around like a zombie because you know that if you let yourself feel anything sh** is going to hit the fan.

I suppose what I want you to get out of this post is to learn that even the most seemingly healthy of us can go through bouts of distress, and it could all be happening underneath the surface. I’m not sure anybody knew how unhappy I was until about two months into this period when I phoned home crying from a public washroom. I’m not sure even I knew I wasn’t okay until that moment. Up until then, it didn’t really occur to me that anything was wrong, I was just trying to get through it.

But from the bad, I try to find the good. And from this rough patch, the good is that I’ve learned.

I’ve learned more about my limits. Running around from one commitment to another 24/7 is not okay. Breaks during which you do absolutely nothing are necessary.

I’ve learned to really start listening to my body and then doing something about it. When I’m tired, I need to go home. When I’m hungry, I need to eat. When my stomach reacts to a food, I need to not eat that. When a body part hurts, I need to stretch or foam roll or get more help. Our bodies are way smarter than we are!!

I’ve learned that it’s okay to ask for help, and that sometimes that’s the only thing you can do. Sometimes you gotta call somebody in tears that, at the time, don’t make sense and tell them you’re falling apart. If they love you, they’ll come to you and put you back together, no questions asked.

Things are starting to get better and feel normal, hence my long-anticipated return to blogging (just roll with me on that point, okay?). The plan for the future is to always remember how I felt, what made me feel that way, and see if I can make sure it never happens again. Sounds easy enough, right?

Thanks for reading,

Heather