Mental Health Struggles

and learnings

I hope you noticed that last week no newsletter was sent out. If you did, that’s because I was struggling. Mentally, I was overwhelmed with too many things happening to me. It felt like I couldn’t do this at all! How am I to manage everything? My partner had travelled, I was falling sick again, we had bedbugs in the house, and I had two paper submissions for my assignments. I was overwhelmed, lost and lonely. Our first instinct is to go, “Why is this happening to me?” and I did too for a moment. Then, I sat down and acknowledged it all, differentiating what my mind was telling me and what really was. This time, it was all external rather than my mind giving me negative stories. If it was all external, I have very little control over it, and thus I acknowledged that I am overwhelmed. I can only do so much and the rest will have to manage on its own. At some point, I even thought, if I couldn’t submit my paper, I would not beat myself over it.

By saying this aloud, to friends and journaling, I felt better. Is this what they mean by letting yourself feel? Going through the feelings and not questioning them? Because I felt lighter and with more cognitive mind space to deal with each one. One day at a time, I worked on my paper, got some meds and reached out to people to socialize. A few days later, having not solved the bed bug problem, I crashed again with no sleep. This wasn’t going to be easy. I was skeptical about asking for help, but finally, I did. I got the house fumigated and went to stay over at a friends.

I thought hey, now we’ve solved the bigger problem! But that wasn’t the case as yet. Although I have been sleeping better, there are no bed bugs and I still itch my way through the day. I was in a better mind space and was still meeting people only to…..BOOM fall once again on my healing foot!

I thought this was my last straw. Like I can’t just deal with all of this. But you know what? We humans are very resilient. Here I am writing to you about this, after having had breakfast and still managing life on my own. It’s not the best way I am, but I am. I may not be eating healthy at the moment, I may be self-medicating, I may be eating a lot of junk and skipping meals, I may hold my pee longer because the walk to the washroom is too painful, but I am here! Thriving, not surviving. I submitted one paper yesterday and writing this piece for you all today.

Why am I sharing all of this with you? Because I am proud of myself! This feels like a huge achievement to me, that after dealing with all of this, being on the verge of falling back down deep into depression, I am here taking on each day slowly. I cry when I have to, and then pep talk myself into doing the next thing. I am proud of understanding and acknowledging my feelings and I am just proud of not feeling shitty! So yay to me!