Brick by Brick
Everyday we are better than we were yesterday yet we don’t take the time to notice or see those small subtle differences. Because the world outside us isn’t moving at warp speed into the future we imagined, we wind up discouraged. Over the past few days burnout approached me in it’s finest hour. I lost my motivation, my drive and was left fatigued, uncertain and depressed. Those few days I couldn’t even think about writing because my mind was totally numb to anything. I needed to take a break because not only was the depression bad but my body felt as if I was getting sick. The load of stress I had placed on myself this month was an insurmountable amount that felt like I would never get through it. But I fought it everyday, trying to breathe, trying to find solace in the moment yet always set in panic mode. The world around me was moving at warp speed and I had never flown in hyper drive before. That is when the fail to jump to hyper space occurred.
I woke up run down, my body hurting all over. It felt like someone hit me with a truck and I was at my wits end with everything. I needed to take time to be with myself and hit that final edge before sinking into the dark place. Sitting in it I felt like the world swarmed around me, my own cruelty knew no bounds and places I had not yet travelled appeared to me. I was in my own bottomless pit of exhaustion and fear, due to the fact I had put unbelievable stress on myself. I needed 3 days to recover from it. Sleeping till 1030, taking naps and getting lost in the world of anime. Doing everything in those few days to release all the pent up things I had bottled in, everyday closer to bursting the dam and letting go.
So what does putting pressure on things do? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! I had put an unbelievable amount of stress on myself all because I am investing in myself and I want it to be perfect. I want to succeed. Where did it leave me? In a 3 day coma of depression, not feeling well, and hopeless. So let me ask you how much pressure are you putting on yourself to lose weight, to be where you were fitness wise before you stopped going, to open your own business, to have a family, to do whatever it is you dream of. Is that pressure helping? Or is it just collapsing you in like a dying star? I get wanting to make life happen but it isn’t done lickity split, it is put together brick by brick.
I was rushing to get everything finalized for my new space. I looked at everything I needed and wondered how I would pay for it all. I looked at the rent, the utilities and thought how impossible it seemed. I thought that I could never in a million years move but here I am officially moving in May. I wanted to add all these things to it before I even knew my clientele for those things. I wanted to make the perfect space that was made for others instead of looking at the space and making it for me. Everyday I worried about the financials of it, everyday carrying a huge anxiety bag of leaving a space I built myself from. I pushed myself to go farther, do more, be better, your not trying hard enough, do more, ugh your useless, why can’t you get this already everyday, brick by brick living in that foundation I was creating for myself until I snapped.
I felt the weight of it in my hands, in my body and then it swallowed me whole. You see I finally was ready to take a chance on myself but that old story of worthlessness, being a burden, being yelled at, being told I would end up like my mother all came to greet me. It was like hey remember all these things, they are the reasons you can’t. So why don’t you just stay and be good, listen to them because you won’t succeed. Everyone thinks so, you will lose all that you built for yourself and live in a tiny room again, unable to afford anything. It screamed it at me and everyday I yelled back but my fears outweighed the faith I had. Nothing was moving forward so I kept thinking about everything I have to do. Do it right now, there’s no time, you have to do everything right away or else you won’t do it. The waves crashed on me and finally I let myself just collapse to them.
Looking back on these past 3 days it was a blur of sleep and listlessness, and not wanting to do anything at all. Today I finally started to fight back but with a new resolve because during those 3 days the old me died. It was like I needed this to break for me to let go. Those 3 days weren’t like a depression I’ve felt before, it was grieving the loss of my old identity. The final pieces anyways. These past few years layer by layer I have peeled pieces away of me that were no longer serving who I was. I would think I would be done with it and a new layer would come at me. Definitely an onion because of all the crying. And these layers I pulled away were things I never realized or even thought about. They were how I couldn’t leave my room for fear of being seen and being judged, yelled at, criticized, bullied. I was living in a dark windowless room that I created. It was lonely and full of fear and no life lived there. I allowed myself to stay there because it’s all I knew, it was safe and my heart couldn’t let go of it. I didn’t know who I would be without it. I was the dark windowless, lifeless room until something started to stir in me. Hope.
Today I put my notice in to leave the room. Not just in my career but within me. I had been working through all the moments I was never loved by my family, all those moments I was punished by them, blamed by them, until that was what I did to myself. That room was my own punishment that I put on myself and now I get to leave it. I get to finally be free. I cried for the death of an old belief that I belonged there, in a tiny dark room. What is your tiny dark room? Where do you keep going in your own mentality? What belief do you keep clinging to, desperately, wholly. If you can just start to notice it. Create an awareness around you, what you are feeling, what comes up. You may not be able to identify it or label it. I wasn’t able to until I was able to. That’s the thing about life, you never truly know until you know. Belief is great, faith is great, but once you know in your being that is when true change begins.
So take a minute to find your “tiny dark room.” Peel it away layer by layer. Because every time you think you have the answer it may lead you a totally different way until you finally know. No one can help you in this, we can give advice all we want, we can challenge others all we want but ultimately it is up to you to know. And once you know you can start to build, brick by brick.
Today was a 7.