I am Unbalanced

I’m unbalanced at best, a procrastinating bum at worst, but really my life is just not where I want it to be. This nagging feeling of being off my game (was I ever even on it?), has lead to a lot of anxiety and stress, which has in no uncertain terms made me a lazy fuck.

Not towards my child though. Not towards work. Towards myself. I have been struggling between balancing work, taking care of a child, and trying to pursue my goals and interests. Instead I am a ball of anxiety and feel high-strung a lot of the time even if I don’t outwardly display it to others. I should probably talk about it more in the hopes it eases some of the tension between my shoulders or the nagging headache I get occassoinally. Maybe releasing these thoughts of mine will quell my insomnia for a change.

I could use some quality sleep. But, really what is quality sleep? I don’t think I have ever been a ‘quality sleeper’ in my entire life. Maybe that says something about me, my personality, and my anxiety. My mind ruminates on a barrage of thoughts throughout the day, that I always feel like my mind is racing and stress is building a dam in my veins as it pulses through me. I need to relax, I need to reach for coffee less, I need to breathe.

I just don’t know how to turn my mind off, if even for only five minutes. All the things I wish I had accomplished so far this year, have disappeared like morning dew off the grass. This isn’t to say it is impossible to accomplish now, but it will require a concentrated effort to get back on track. I run the rails in my head and I derail my train all fucking day. Why take a nice smooth ride, when I can just derail myself and barrel through rocks, timber, sand, grass, or anything else that comes my way until I come to a jerking halt.

I am my own worst enemy and yet that enemy still comes everyday. And I am so tired of them knocking on my door every morning. Every night as my thoughts electrify my brain, I promise myself, ‘It’s okay. Tomorrow is a new day. We can try tomorrow.’ I wake up and wherever that higher sense of self went, they fucked of and left me with myself. Who happens to roll straight back into our routine of derailed fuckery.

I suppose working on what derails me would improve the outcome in the future, but it is ending cycles of habits I have kept up for decades at this point. Killing or changing habits is hard. It requires a level of preservation, determination, and goal setting kick-assery that I have never found within in my mental possession. The former sentence reflects my mind even before I have even finished writing this, my mind has said, ‘it is not within me to succeed.’ The real root of failure has reared its head to me.

When I am overwhelmed my habit of eating crap food, mainly bread, pastries, and chocolate rears its ugly head. It is the ease of convenience, it shoves my stress deeper and deeper into me as I shovel it into my face. Unfortunately, this habit goes directly against two habits I am trying to work on: my budget and health. Every time I engage in this behavior (I secretly eat most of this crap) I am feeding the habit. It creates a huge sense of disappointment, shame, and guilt within myself at my behavior. Every food I eat secretly comes out of my money that could be spent on my child, my health, my savings, a trip, etc. Real goals I dream about, but I get no closer to when engaging in this behavior.

The secret eating to suppress my anxiety also adds to my waistline and digestional distress I experience often. It adds to my aches and pains and lowers my will and intent to try and stretch or exercise because I am just so full and on a sugar crash. I haven’t been this bad with secret eating in a while, but it has been on and off for probably the past year or so.

At first, I presumed that it was just me and my emotions from being a new mother and trying to adjust to my new role and life. Lately, though I feel it has more to do with the pandemic, a stroke of homesickness, and general disappointment with where I am at at 35. I have been in a similar place before emotionally, but it isn’t anywhere as deep nor as dark as when I was approaching 30. I am realizing 35 has been a transitional age for me to ‘get my shit together’ awakening that I should have started years before, but just touched the surface on when I first started to take care of myself.

I have let myself go when it comes to my mental health, physical health, spiritual well-being, and emotional health. The unbalance in my life as I adjust to motherhood has made me realize I need to take care of myself, not so much to take care of others, but as to be the woman I want to be. The woman I envision myself to be, before my little girl who is sprouting in knowledge, movement, and life, day by day. I want to be her example of a pillar of strength, a rock of unbelievable prowess, undullable beauty and wisdom, tranquility and tenacity to whether all the elements of life. I have fallen short of that ideal and I am angry with the only person I can be angry at: myself.

Perfectionist? Perhaps, but I don’t adhere to it, I just have high standards for myself. I also have a fear of the unknown and being successful. All of this together is a recipe for self-sabotage and an ongoing cycle of bad habits to keep me locked where I am. These habits don’t serve me and the woman I imagine I am and want to be, rather they serve the version of myself that was trapped for more than a decade in depression, anxiety and a state of low self-worth. I am not that woman anymore, but my habits that created the old version of me did not disappear as I repaired, restored, recreated, and reenvisioned the new me. The me that currently transcends the old one while holding onto those old roots. But all good gardeners know, sometimes the bad roots need to be cut, and these habits of mine need to begone for balance to be restored to myself. I deserve to be in balance.