I know this is a little far from what my usual posts are about but I feel that I need to share this for anyone else who may be going through anything similar. In the past month I have felt more emotions than I have ever felt in my entire life. It all began with my current job setting the tone for the stress in my life over the last almost two years. I’m a very easy going person and can usually adjust to any situation, but the experience in my position I could have in no way prepared for. In fairness my co-workers had warned me about the job and the stress involved. As time passed working I began to realize it wasn’t so much the job as it was the people surrounding it. Unnecessary tensions and stress created such a negative vibe that it really began to get old quick. I held my head high through the mistakes, learning curves and oppositions I experienced.
In the last month I have come to realize one thing, self love matters. Not the kind where you obsess over your appearance or need to look good no matter what. I am talking the internal respect that we should all have for ourselves to take care of our health, happiness and lives. If you are not happy with yourself or don’t have the energy to put into your mental health everything else around you will crash and burn. I have been working so hard to get through the stress and tensions that I put the part of me that cares for my well being on the back burner. I have become unhealthy, gaining weight and not making time for activities to keep my body energized. The things that I thought mattered, like keeping the tension down and making other people happy to the extent of putting my own happiness on the line, don’t matter. If you try and make other people happy at the expense of your own happiness you are only sabotaging yourself (and them).
On top of the unnecessary tensions and stress at my job, Jeff and I decided to try and buy a house in January. The process that should have been somewhat simple has turned into the most nightmarish experience that has been drug out over a month. There were speed bumps that we were not expecting and it has made the approval process that much harder. Now mix all those emotions from my workplace with the emotions of constantly being on that high of excitement only to be let down over and over again and you have a recipe for a breakdown. Of course, this was not the only thing happening; during this time I had also learned of a couple of family members that had become sick. One diagnosed with a very rare type of leukemia and the other being set up in hospice.
I was speechless, the amount of things that were happening all at the same time was mind boggling. I have been riding on somewhat of a numb shock for the past couple of months and in turn couldn’t even see the damage that the stress was having on my body and mental health. I was constantly getting depressed, eating for no reason and not exercising one bit. Before I knew it I had gained 15lbs all in a matter of a month. This last Friday night, all the tensions and emotions finally caught up to me when we learned we were most likely not going to get the house we have been painfully working for over the past month. I broke down and just cried, not even for the house, but for everything that had come about. I began to realize that while we may not be able to control the outcome of everything in our lives; I can at least control a couple of things, my environment and the people that I surround myself with.
It was like a light bulb slowly flickering to turn on suddenly burst out in the brightest light. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to make people around you happy, in the end if they don’t want to be happy all it will do is bleed you dry of your own happiness. With that, I have made the decision to move on from my work place and am doing some self reflecting. This turned out to be a good thing because today, we learned that the lenders for the house won’t budge on their terms which are not realistic, so we have decided not to move forward with the house. It was weird, I expected to be sad, but the feeling of relief knowing it was over was freeing.
For anyone out there dealing with anything similar or even just having a hard time saying yes or no to something, I hope this has helped. Remember, you are in control of your environment and happiness, even though we cannot control everything in our lives we have the ability to choose to do what makes us happy. I hope that you do.
lovellie
