I’ve struggled to find the right words which is why I’ve neglected my blog. I’m not happy about it at all, but I’ve been in a slump. I don’t know why I’m afraid to share that with everyone. I’ve found it a million times easier to just stay quiet and inactive on social media than to tell you all what I’ve been going through and feeling. But that’s not reality and I don’t want to only show you the good.
I’ve been struggling lately, actually a little more than “lately”. It’s been about two months, which is why I haven’t been posting.
Let’s back track to the last time we talked. I posted after my birthday early November. We’re still working from home and I was starting to find it incredibly tough to WFH in my 600 sq. foot apartment with a roommate. I’m sure all my NY peeps can relate. I just wanted to cry and scream all the time because there was quite literally NO WHERE to go other than my room which is only big enough for my bed or I can work 6 feet away at the kitchen table about an arm’s length away from my roommate. That was really starting to eat away at me and shifting my outlook on everything. I just felt negative about all aspects of my life. I lost absolutely all my motivation. I was lucky if I hit more than 400 steps in a day. I truly felt like the walls were caving in on me. My therapist told me it’s not rare for the physical space we live in to impact our mental state and health. My mental state was at an all-time low.
As we move through December, the holidays felt incredibly different this year. My family moved to a new place. I was unable to see my dad. It was a lot of change in a small amount of time and as much as I tried to pretend everything was okay, it wasn’t. I had my first anxiety attack in over a year, and I was so upset. That wasn’t exactly how I wanted to wrap up my last day at home with my family.
I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but I knew that I needed to make some changes this year. Writing was on my list and it’s the fourth week in the year, so I got to it eventually. The other thing I really wanted to implement back into my life is exercise because it does truly make me feel better, especially mentally. I started running more, I’m actually training for the NYC Virtual Half Marathon (SOS). I’ve been using the Nike Running App because they have some pretty awesome guided runs in partnership with the meditation app Head Space. During one of my runs last week, the coach said something along the lines of “sometimes we spend too much time worried about the past or the future that we are missing the now, the present.” And that spoke volumes to me. The past two months I have never been more absent from the present. I was hyper- focused on what’s next, what could go wrong. I spent so much time thinking about the past and how I could have acted differently or done better. I was living for every moment other than the “now”. I truly think that has a lot to do with how I’ve been feeling lately.
I’m continuing my weekly therapy, being more active physically and most importantly trying my best to enjoy the present.
How have you really been lately? Let’s open this conversation up again because we can all get through this together. Whether you reach out or not, just know there’s at least one other person out there (cough, cough me) that feels anxiety, sadness, anger and so much more. I look forward to sharing more with you all, especially some big life updates coming up soon.