An inside story
Let’s talk about the untalkable. Let’s speak the unspeakable. For the past few months I’ve been balancing on the edge of a cliff. I knew it, I felt it, and I was scared to fall. Since last summer I knew I had to be careful. When it took me two full weeks of holiday to feel energised again I knew that I wasn’t doing well.
Every day was an endless task. Never satisfied, never happy with what I had achieved. Waking up was hard. Nearly everything felt impossible. My heart was racing. My body felt tense as if ready to fight. Nights were spent tossing and turning, waking up to stare into darkness and falling back into a restless sleep. Thinking of the future made me cry because I could no longer see one. I wanted to hide away from the world, hide from the body I was stuck in. Some friends saw through my bullshit stories, and I am grateful to them for that.
Things had to change. I had to get a grip. It wasn’t one thing that caused tension within myself, it were the small things that turned into majors obstacles inside my head. I wasn’t happy with my work, I felt disappointed because I had no inspiration to write, I got angry because we didn’t have time to take or edit photos, I felt hopeless because it seemed like we would never save up enough money to leave on our round-the-world trip, I hated that I couldn’t ride my bike as much as I wanted, I felt flooded by social media and unable to keep up and then, after a while, I felt sad, because I felt nothing at all.
Why am I telling you this? Because I am sure that I am not alone. Because I haven’t fallen yet and have started my scramble back up again. I stopped checking social media every day. When a sentence pops up in my head, I just put it down on paper without turning it into a full story. When work gets the better of me I go for a walk or turn up the music while dancing with my eyes closed and forgetting about the world outside. When feeling bad I try to talk about it instead of closing myself off. Thanks to a friend who asked me to help her with a project, I started drawing again. Nothing special, just pencil and paper, but it stirred something inside of me. An urge to create slowly re-awoke and made it’s way to the surface. And now, for the first time in a long time, I am happy waking up in the morning and feel ready to take on the day that lies ahead.
May all of you wake up in the morning ready to greet the world with a smile. And if not, that’s perfectly fine. Just keep in mind that, how bad it might feel, it never rains forever.
