Recently I’ve been concentrating on why I worry so much. Why I don’t do what I know will make me feel a whole lot better and stop putting stress on myself? Yep, that bag of stress that I constantly pick up and put on my shoulder, like a toilet waiting for a dump load. I walk around with it, making myself miserable and those closest to me sometimes feel the brunt of this when I’m not at my best.
It’s like I’m two personalities. One that shows the happy face, take it all on, handle it on, make everyone around me happy; and the other that worries constantly and goes into a depression that throws me into my emotional eating past.
When I think about it, I’m not lying to myself or anyone else for that matter, those two personalities are really who I am. I’m very nurturing and I love helping people and trying to fix things; I love looking at the bright side of any given situation, being an optimist, striving for the good and making myself and others happy.
I also get pessimistic to a point where I wonder to myself why do things always work the way they do and why does my life feel like it’s on the spin cycle. Around and around I go on this merry go round that has become my life where nothing much changes. But some things do change, when you have children in your life there are always changes, LOL! However, most things remain the same for me on a personal level.
I think back to another time when I was younger and had dreams and personal goals and wondered what happened to them. What was my plan when I decided to come here (Florida) to live?
One of them was to focus on my kids. I’ve been doing that. I’ve been spending more time with them. I left the “rat race” career ladder behind so that I could be there when my children needed me. And that’s worked out perfectly.
I also wanted to focus on my marriage because my husband and I were at loggerheads going in different directions. Like two ships sailing in different seas. I was ready to call it quits because it was just mentally too exhausting. It was time to leave it all behind.
Living here hasn’t been easy for us. We’ve had ups and downs and downs and ups. It’s been a major adjustment financially because we both stepped away (especially on my part) from jobs that were well-paying and also career advancing. I was just tired of just being and the way we were living was not focusing on us or our family.
Fast forward to today (so to speak), with both of us having experience the loss of our parents (his mom is still living) that was very hard emotionally. It seemed like each time we advanced, something happens and we take a step backward. And of course I took it all on my shoulders because that’s just how I am. Plus I am the one who organize and pull our family unit together so of course it would weigh more heavily on my shoulders.
I had to get to the root of my mental anguish. Was I sabotaging myself? I have so many great ideas and I can see myself doing them and working it all out. Yet I am still on the same page. Did I like to worry; has this become such a normal part of my psychic? It’s like sitting in a sea of clutter. That’s what I was feeling. Every time I made an attempt to unclutter myself, my life, I ended up doing only half of what I started, thus not completing anything and getting nowhere. I also took on too many things, again getting nowhere. But I knew better than that. In my life I’ve experienced a lot and knew the intricacies of what to do and what not to do. I was trying to find me because somewhere in all the going ons of my life I lost me.
Lately I’ve been doing what I learned to do a long time ago but seem to have abandoned. I’m learning to let go and let God. This might sound corny but truthfully this is working for me. It’s not easy to do of course because I like to hold on to my situations and turn them inside out and figure it all out by myself. And by myself also means, sorting the problems out with my husband as well, because I’m not alone. I just tend to think that way at times, that’s the worrier in me!
So with this renewed way of thinking I’ve found that I can accomplish a lot and have been accomplishing one thing at a time. It’s also renewed my faith in me and my God. The road still gets chaotic and sometimes I need some very strong mental pushing, however, when I think about what it is I’m trying to do and pray on it, everything somehow falls into place. I know God is at work in my life.