I came here to write a new blog post, intent on spilling my feelings and emotions as it has been several months since I last have written one. However, I read the most recent post before this one entitled “feeling restless” and my feelings are the same.
If I had grabbed that post, as is, and posted it today, it would ring just as true now.
In any case, I think it would be therapeutic for me to spill my thoughts, regardless of how repetitive it may sound. When you’re stuck in a cycle like I am, things tend to repeat and repeat and… repeat. There’s a quote I read once that stuck with me:
“you will be tested in the same way every time until you learn your lesson”
Unfortunately for me, I am a very slow learner nowadays so I keep having to relearn this one lesson. I keep falling into the same mistakes, not realizing I had crossed this road before because I so readily allow myself to forget the past in order to move on.
But is it really moving on if nothing ever changes?
If I want to make true lasting change, I need to start getting uncomfortable and start asking myself the difficult questions, such as what do I want my life to look like? What kind of person do I want to become? What kinds of habits do I want to nurture?
Those are the kinds of things I haven’t paid much thought to before.
If I want to be the kind of person who sleeps early, I need to work on my discipline. I need to resist temptation, resist the pull of short-term satisfaction. I’ve been allowing my impulses to take charge too often and it’s time to make healthier choices.
Allowing my sleep schedule to fall to disarray is part of how I got into this mess. Ignoring my emotions and letting them fester and bottle up is yet another part. If I take a step back and analyze all my shortcomings, then maybe I can find a way to grow.
The first step is to make a schedule and stick to it. I keep trying to make plans where I go offline or turn off my screens after a certain time because I realized that I get overstimulated otherwise and it gets in the way of me sleeping early. And if I don’t sleep early, I’ll have a very high chance of waking up in a sour mood the next day.
For a few days, I’ll stick to it and be fine but then after a while, I’ll let my ego take over and think I don’t need it anymore. I, of course, do need to stick to my routine. I’ve seen firsthand what can happen when I’m sleep deprived and I owe it to myself and to the people I care about to avoid that. There is too much potential for harm otherwise.
The second step is to watch my diet. As much as I hate to admit it, I need to limit caffeine and sugar intake as it can have a disastrous impact on my mental health. I know I give in to my impulses a lot and get it anyways but I need to stop being childish. It’s okay to have once in a while but I need to be more conscious about it.
And now… the third and probably hardest step I’m going to mention.
I’m going to try and see a doctor again. I think I may need to go back on antidepressants. I’m having a hard time managing my stress and anxiety, and my emotions in general. As much as I like to brag about being able to handle things on my own, I don’t think I am handling things well enough. I think I could use a little help.
Ah, I guess I finally said it.
I need help.
I’m having a hard time managing on my own and for the past year, I’ve been trying to find distractions and avoid my problems through escapism. But the funny thing is, your problems manage to find you anyways no matter how fast you try to run away.
Somehow, running away has never been the answer no matter how often I get the urge to up and disappear, leaving people to wonder where I’ve gone. Sometimes, I do think that people would be better off without me. Sometimes, I do wonder what their lives would look like if I wasn’t in it. And yet, I find it so hard to just leave forever.
If someone offered me a time machine where ten years would pass in an instant and I wouldn’t have to experience them passing, I’d be very tempted to take it, just to see how a world where ten years without me being around would progress. To see who would miss me, to see who would forget about me, to see who would move on.
Maybe in a way, that is selfish of me to wonder.
I think so much of myself and how others perceive me, that I often neglect to think about their feelings. I think that if I met myself as someone else, I wouldn’t want to be friends with me. Someone who wallows in their emotions, overthinks everything. Someone who you fear leaving alone because you think they can’t handle it.
I don’t think I’ve done a lot of self reflection in the past six months otherwise I would have done something way sooner. I don’t think I realized what kind of person I was being. I don’t really think about my own actions and behavior. I just let my impulses take over, most of the time. I want to try and work on pausing before I react too.
It’s too easy to let emotions take over in the heat of the moment but if I can learn to pause, I can change my reaction. I can take a deep breath and realize that 99% of the things I stress/worry about aren’t the end of the world. Just because I started my work eight minutes late doesn’t mean that I’m a terrible person and should burn.
I’m trying to take my time at work and not rush through everything since I realized that is a source of stress for me. Nobody is perfect and I certainly am not. But if I can take things slow and take my time, I find that work doesn’t drain my energy as much. Maybe if I keep working at this skill, Sunday night won’t scare me as much anymore.
There are other sources of stress, of course, but it is almost 9pm and I said I was going to work on my routine and my sleep schedule so I’m going to end this blog post short. Having written this much already, I feel like some weight is off my shoulders.
I vow to update this blog every Monday, for the foreseeable future, as a way to prevent myself from bottling up my emotions. I fear that it has become subconscious and that even if I don’t intend to, I end up doing so as part of my default programming.
So hopefully, I’ll see you, dear reader, next Monday.
Signing off,
Zero