There are days when everything is just wrong, and no matter how hard I try to stay positive, use affirmations, mental pep talk, change the things I can change and accept the things I can't change, I can't muster the positivity. When I open my mouth to say anything about how I am, I hear this whining bitch who
Just Isn't Me. So that's a topic I shy away from. I don't want to bitch and moan, I don't want to be this wandering dark cloud that may just suck up everyone else's good mood. And I most definitely don't want to sound like a victim.
I'm overtired, overstressed; undervacationed and underslept, and have two more weeks of continuous hard work before the big deadline. I can't ask for an extension, as it's already been renegotiated, and if the book is to be published this year, it has to start going through the publishing house mill soon. And because I was a bit optimistic and thought I couldn't possibly need more than three months for the script, and forgot that in this business, work tends to come in torrents rather than in trickles, which it did, and was very much affected by the heat earlier in summer (affected meaning mentally semi-incapacitated), it has become somewhat stressful. Most of all, of course, I was very optimistic regarding my own workload capacity, as I keep forgetting that I still am not back where I was before last autumn.
I don't like to moan about my work situation as I am absolutely aware that I have chosen to be freelance, and thus have to accept what that entails. (How much of that choice was really a full choice and how much was a default choice can be discussed; but the fact remains: I chose to be a translator.) But there are parts about this that I haven't chosen, namely the flow of work. I've gone most of the year with very little work, so when there is all of a sudden lots coming in, I have to take on as much as I possibly can, as I desperately need the money. It is a choice, but parts of it is necessity. So I've gone from less than half-time to three parallell projects and way too much to do, which is actually pretty normal for this industry. But since my focus is not the best, and doesn't get any better from sleep deprivation as I haven't been able to sleep well for months now, everything takes so much longer than it normally should. And I'm feeling more depressed and anxious, tired to the point where it feels unhealthily tired, and my body is reacting to it(which isn't strange, since it was probably a PTSD reaction last year and it takes longer to recover from than a year); but
what can I do? This is the only job I have, this is all I can. I have a deadline to meet and I need the money to not only pay my bills, but to pay for dance classes and workshops in autumn, and to be able to *Goddess willing* start my 2nd spiral of the Priestess of Avalon training. So I really can't say no to work assignments even if I could do with some time off.
But I still don't like to talk about this with others, as I don't want to be dismissed with "it's your choice".
Come to think of it, there's a lot of things I don't speak about now. I can see a pattern here... Whenever I'm lower, more tired, sadder, I turn away from how I feel and focus on other things. Usually other people's feelings and needs. This time, I've actually thought that I'm dealing with it beautifully by working with affirmations and positive thoughts, which
have worked to a degree, but realise that doing that I don't really get to the bottom of the problem and work to
solve it, when I should really be doing both. That is of course assuming that I a) know what the problem is, and b) can solve it.
I am very much present in my emotions, so there's no denial of them, but when I start getting too negative and tired, it feels more positive and productive to focus on positive things rather than negative. Letting myself be consumed by stress, sadness, weariness, powerlessness or whatever I may be feeling in the moment, won't make anything better, so can it really be wrong to focus on the positive?
Today was one of those days. It's been raining on and off for most of the day - and no light rain, at that - I still haven't finished the work I've planned for today but went to dance class anyway. Since February, the dance has pretty much been a huge source of joy and creativity, and an outlet for stress and any emotions, but for the last two weeks (with no dance, as it's the summer holiday), I've felt less enthusiastic about it. And with being stressed and having no energy, it may not have been the wisest thing to do. I sucked!
Nothing worked the way I wanted it to; there were steps I should have learned but had no recollection of whatsoever (could be that they learned them in the first weeks of the summer course, when I wasn't there), and not only did I feel bad about it, I also didn't learn them as fast as I wanted to as the channels between body and brain appeared to have shut down; I didn't feel like I was able to follow the class like I normally do, I felt SO out of place and really struggled to stay present and focussed, but no. I'm just so disappointed in myself. Of course I'm allowed a bad day, but surely by now I should be able to expect more of myself than this?
As usual with me, low self esteem seems to be paired with a high degree of perfectionism. So I really can't do anything right today,
The mirror didn't make it any better, because we are so not friends right now. I've put on weight this summer, too much weight, and the problem is that
I don't know why. If I knew that I'd overeaten, at least I would know why, but now I don't. And it doesn't help that the few people I've mentioned it to have said words to the effect that it suits me and that I'm still slim; showing that everyone can see that I've put on weight. It's not just my imagination. I hate it to a degree most people wouldn't understand, and I know that it's not rational.
The mirrors in the dance studio today were particularly evil, and when I was already panicking over how bad a dancer I've become in just a few weeks' time, let's just say that it didn't make it better. I am bigger than I want to be - and what I want is no longer a sickly skinny ideal - and I don't feel at home in my body. I hate the look of it now to the extent that I feel weepy and angry and desperate, but I'm too smart to do something drastic about it. I'm more hoping that it may be stress induced and will normalise when my life gets back to a more normal pace. Having said that, I wouldn't mind dancing in a dark room without mirrors, or in a burkha, next time.
Do the body issues get to me because I'm tired, stressed, and have lower self esteem, or do I have lower self esteem because of the body issues? Where's the hen and the egg?
Are they ED related or normal? How freaked out and disgusted with your body is normal to get? I will claim that as long as I'm not doing anything stupid because of the body image issues, it's not an eating disorder, or even leftovers of it, but normal body anxiety. But I will probably never know where you draw the line between normal neurosis and the remains of the ED. All I know that it is my choice whether I ever go back to the ED behaviours.
The day is coming to an end, I have more work left to do, and feel relieved that it will soon be time to sleep and a new day tomorrow.
This too shall pass.
