To Myself, Ten Years Ago (+ A Fun Meltdown!)
Project 365, Day 132/365
Today, after three back to back to back meetings at work, I sat at my desk, felt my breath catch in my chest, and had a full-on anxiety attack meltdown. Well, first, I walked over to the bathroom, and then had a full-on anxiety attack meltdown. Then, I proceeded to dive into a mental tailspin and wrote a whole blog post about it and how we’re all drowning. In work. In emotions. In fear. In Zoom meetings. In languishing. In stress. Everything is on fire.
When I went back to it after dinner and read through what I had written, I said out loud to myself: “Jesus, I can’t publish that.” It was the incoherent ramblings of someone experiencing a mini-crisis (at least that’s what it felt like at the time, minus the “mini” part). So here I sit just past 10:30 pm on a Tuesday night with nothing.
I was going to share some pretty photos of pretty rooms I’ve bookmarked lately, but instead, I’m going to share a passage (poem? writing? unsure what to call it) that I read just at the tail end of my meltdown by happenstance that at first made me spiral even more but then calmed me a bit so I could finish out my day without replying to emails through blurry, watery eyeballs.
It’s beautiful:
To Myself, Ten Years Ago
You won’t believe what I see from this vantage point, the years stretching out before you like a long an winding road. I don’t what to scare you, but there is a forest just up ahead. One so dense and dark, the sunlight won’t reach you for a while. You will wander lost, in this long, perilous night, not knowing if it will ever come to an end. But believe me, the light will find you again, and when it does, you will no longer be afraid of the dark.
Stop to catch your breath. Soon, a jagged mountain of ice will rise before you, so steep it will make you want to turn bac around. Don’t despare; the first foothold is always the most difficult and every inch you claim of that cold, hard precipice will only make you stronger. Before you know it, the ground will level out beneath you, and you will look back to see you had conquered what you once thought impossible.
See that turn just up ahead? That’s the place where love will meet you, with arms so warm it will melt away the winter in an instant. And then, it will be summer for a very long time.
I’m okay now, by the way. Sometimes, we have our moments and today was one of mine. Just a bad day. I often mutter to myself “It’s a bad day, not a bad life” and that helps! I shoulder zero shame over admitting my meltdown. It’s not a sign that I’m in despair but just a sign that I’m a human, living through a very weird, heavy, literally unprecedented time, who maybe says “I’ll do it” a few too many times at work, and is tired of feeling the ups and many, many downs of an uncomfortable body situation. “Oh…is that all?” 🙂
See you tomorrow, FOAS.