June 2020 – Why do I feel this way?

Going into June, I was excited. Even though there was (& still is) a ton of craziness in the world with COVID, tons of precautions, racist acts, shifts in overall human interaction, etc. This wasn’t a big issue for me as I could see light! I felt happy, loved, and like things were on its way to getting better. Nothing could bring me down.

The weekend before my birthday, people gathered to celebrate ME! I was so surprised and overwhelmed with amazing feelings of gratitude, love and blessings.

So what happened in the last three weeks to change that? Today I am feeling pretty close to terrible. I first wrote terrible but then had myself include “pretty close to” because I cannot accept the feeling of being that bad. Things are never that bad. Or can they be? Why am I so un-accepting of “negative” emotions? Why do I believe that there are negative feelings and positive feelings?

I recently got myself a life coach to help me navigate my life. During a call, she pointed out my stubbornness for black & white thinking. I had no idea I always scaled everything in a good or bad, right or wrong type of way. Who is to say something is right vs wrong? What exactly is good vs bad? No black and white. Life is grey!! It was also not until she told me this that I realized not all of my beliefs are correct or true. I tend to live by my emotions and my brain turns my feelings into facts even if they are not actually true. For example (this happened two days ago), let’s say Cody is feeling tired after working a week of night shifts, and is not actively engaging with me like I would like him to after being away from home for seven days. I immediately turn my feelings into the fact that he isn’t interested in me or isn’t happy to be home, and isn’t happy to see me, etc. POOR GUY. How exhausting this is for him and for myself because it is not true. I work myself up into believing things like this. I then like to suppress my feelings because I don’t want to accept that I am feeling a negative way – I believe I am a happy, positive, go-lucky type of person that brings joy into lives!!! How the heck am I going to be able to do that if I let myself feel crappy feelings? Well life isn’t full of only good feelings, there are ugly ones too. As much as I want to have good feelings 100% of the time in my life, I understand that I would never be able to grow into the human I want to be if I didn’t experience and ACCEPT the crappy feelings that come and go.

Today, June 25th I am feeling down. Feeling tired. Feeling drained. I just want to cry and not interact with anyone. This week I have had to hit the snooze button every morning – that is not like me. Typically, going to the gym is something I look forward to- well not this week. I even started to tear up in the middle of my workout when Cody came over to see how I was doing. Gosh, I had to make myself stop because tough chicks like me dont cry in the gym!!! I feel guilty for feeling down and not being a light to others today.

I tried to analyze why I am feeling this way and I think it may be stemming from some suppressed hurt. June is bittersweet.. I celebrate my birthday, then my youngest brother, Josh’s birthday, then it’s a tough day on Father’s Day and then the anniversary of my dad’s passing falls on the 28th. That stupid date keeps replaying in my mind and I have not accepted it for what it is. How has it been three years already?! I don’t talk about it much and maybe that bugs me? I have caught myself telling a couple people in my life this week that my family does not talk about the tragedy and how it affected each us. Even while my dad was sick, we didn’t discuss it. We continued on with life expecting my dad to get better. Well when he didn’t, we still didn’t talk about it. We continued on with life as life does go on. My family doesn’t talk about any hurt, emotions or even connect often about my dad. I was with them on Father’s Day and we didn’t even talk about it. Is this normal? Is this abnormal? Here goes my thinking into what is right and what is wrong. Life is grey.

I realize these crappy feelings have gone on too long and I am tired of feeling this way. I need to accept that I am going to have off days, off weeks and during those times, I need to let myself relax and focus on me. Focus on consuming things I love. Things I miss, like my dad. Things that make me feel good, like bike rides and spending time outside. I also need to communicate how I feel. Talk to someone I love or maybe someone that doesn’t really know me (I talked to a random lady at the gas station about the beautiful weather and that made me feel pretty good). I also need to write exactly how I am feeling the minute I start to feel something ugly. Like feeding this urge to just type what comes to mind and express what I am feeling even if it doesn’t make sense (well you have read this far- does it make any sense?). There is no time to waste when it comes to mental well-being.

Today I accept. I accept that I feel crappy even though I love my life. I accept that tomorrow is a new day and I look forward to what it has to bring.

A big thanks to my favorite person in the world, Cody for making sure I have a person to hug when I need it. A shout-out to the famous Ed Mylett for his empowering podcasts and making me feel like I already have the tools to feel better, I just have to be patient with myself and figure out how to use them. Also a big thank you to my new coach for helping me realize it is completely valid for me to feel the way I am feeling. It is more than okay to be human and cry on the floor with Made by Marcus in hand.