March 20th

March 20, 2018 marked 7 years free of self-harm. When I realized that it was 7 years, I felt some happiness for making it this far but mostly I felt disappointed in myself. I realize that 7 years free of self-harm is a huge accomplishment but when I think about how my self-care practices could have been much better. It’s hard to want to celebrate an achievement like this when I’m still upset with myself for taking no breaks and ignoring my mental health the depressive and suicidal weeks after my last birthday.

I use my birthday as a time to reflect and recommit to healing, growth, and self love. While I know that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself because recovery and healing is important ongoing work, I know that I did myself a disservice and continue to do so when I ignore my mental health and put self-care on a back burner. I knew it was bad practice then but I figured that I just hadn’t had the time to adjust yet to balancing my mental health and my first full time job. I tried to make a commitment then to creating stronger boundaries and taking mental health days. That didn’t last too long and I was often overwhelmed by guilt from taking a day off with work not 100% as well as the dread of having to catch up on anything missed. It doesn’t help that sometimes it feels like there is a target on my back when I’m out of the office. When my job performance suffered following this post birthday suicidal depressive mess, I decided to be honest in hopes that being honest with my feelings would help me be more honest with myself and gain more support in my environment. I was reminded to prioritize my paperwork and my practice self care.So I did and I told myself that I wouldn’t take a day for myself unless everything was 100% done. I quickly realized that this is not possible. With that understanding, I tried to create boundaries and recommit to self care but unfortunately, that did not last very long. More than anything, I've been overwhelmed by guilt and disappointment for not taking better care of myself.

I'm trying to remind myself to be gentle with myself as I try to find balance. I deserve that much. I've put my mental health on a back burner and the more I realized this, the more I became upset with myself. For that I owe myself an apology. None of this is easy. I look at my deserving tattoo multiple times a day and know that I deserve to be here and I know that I deserve to put as much work and energy into myself as much as anything else. I'm working on no longer ignoring these truths because I am deserving. Reflecting on this anniversary and my affirmations, I'm going to commit to taking it one day at a time. I'm forgiving myself and committing to not being so hard on myself. I don't belong on the back burner so I'm not staying there anymore. I'm happy to be alive. I'm happy to be here and I'm worth all the hard work that healing requires. I'm prioritizing myself and my mental health because I am deserving.

There is a romance brewing here

Between joy and I.

I deserve her and she deserves me.

                               -Upile Chisala

Semester Over

Now it's time to relax. This past semester was really hard for me and because I was struggling with so many things, I felt like a total failure. Of course now when the semester is over, I look back and realized that, "Hey, I'm not crazy, I survived this shit." I really wasn't sure I was going to make it out of there okay but I guess I did.

I'm still in a place where I'm punishing myself with lack of sleep or sleeping through the days and losing valuable time when the kids are at school and I can actually get work done but I'm working on it. It's a lot better than the things I was punishing myself for during the semester. I had a lot of moments last semester where I blamed myself for a lot of things that I had or have no control over and that was wrong. That isn't healthy at all. I need to learn to stop blaming myself for these things. The thing is, I only begin to blame and punish myself during the most stressful parts of the semester which for last semester was from spring break until the day I moved out of my residence hall.

My summer courses begin this week so I'm going to take that opportunity to balance my self-care with my school work. This past spring, self-care and school work just crashed and everything went downhill. It's so important to take care of yourself. I had to have on of my dear professors remind me of this a few weeks ago. Work is important and reaching your goals is important but you can't make it if you're not taking care of yourself. I know that everyone is different but I think that you should take some time out from working your ass off and spend maybe an hour or so doing something just for you. It could be something spiritual, crafty, sporty, whatever your heart desires that just relaxes you and keeps you from going crazy. Sometimes you need to open up and let it all out in addition to doing something that relaxes you. I'm working on this and hopefully, I will take my own advice in upcoming semesters. I'd like to avoid another downward spiral just because I decided not to take care of myself in the way that I should have.


As always, if you need to talk about anything, I'm here to listen
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