Miss Bossy Pants

“Go to the party”, the voice urged me.  

One of tens or maybe hundreds of voices overlapping in my psyche; this was my Bossy Pants voice. 

Not to be confused with my Mean Girl voice, who’s tone is slightly more pitchy and slopes like a Valley girl.
                                     

Bossy likes to tell me what I should do. Her favorites are telling me to do yoga, eat clean, clean my apartment, be more adventurous, and read. 

Tonight she was demanding I go to a Super Bowl party because as Mean Girl would say, “It’s, like, super lame to stay in for the Super Bowl.”

Bossy doesn’t talk like that, she has a much more leveled-headed, logical, if not domineering tone. 

“It will be good for you to get out and socialize,” she says, and when I tell her I’m exhausted and just not in the mood and don’t really care for football anyway, she responds as per usual, “You really need to do it.” 

The chorus of voices agree, I can almost hear their eyes roll to the back of their heads.  

But there’s another voice, so soft-spoken and faint, I could barely hear her. Speak up, I urge her silently, hoping she might give me a justification to stay in like I wanted. 

I have to tell the others to shut up, and listen closely, when I hear her: the voice of Self Care. 

When I hear her speak I know she’s the one who actually cares about my wellbeing. She’s not concerned with what I “should” be doing, she doesn’t care about me fitting in that very narrow box of social “norms”. She wants me to do what will make me most happy and operating at my best-self. 

And tonight that meant wearing pjs and writing in Starbucks (with a book on the table I was “supposed” to read, but didn’t, because that wouldn’t have been self care.)

It’s really hard to differentiate between what we “should” be doing and what’s truly in our best interest. Between what will deplete vs what will recharge us, what will make us feel like we’re doing whats expected of us vs doing what feels right. 

Parties are fun, and socializing is absolutely necessary, but forcing yourself to do something you’re just not up for is not self care- it’s peer pressure. 

I got texts of photos of beer-pong from Half-Time and secretly wondered how Justin’s performance and commercials were going to be- and a small twinge of FOMO pinched me. 

But the cool thing about Self Care is that you get to change your mind- at any point you can turn your car around if you want to. Self Care will tell you exactly what will help you feel best- you just need to tune out the Bossy and Mean Girls- and listen out for hers. 

The Black Elephant in The Room

Yesterday I wrote about the days I am lucky enough to wake with a warm sunny halo around my head...mmmm. 

But that was some days. Most days? Most days I wake up with a feeling of dread washing over me, with the thought of ‘what if today sucks’ resounding in my head? 

I’m not a pessimist at all, I just struggle with this thing called anxiety that often makes me operate in fear rather than love.

As a teenager I was very comfortable sharing the darker parts of me. I didn't see it as something to be ashamed by, it just was. I could say I was feeling depressed by wearing black nail polish before it was trendy, or write about it in an emo poem for all of Facebook or Myspace to see. 

As an adult, I no longer want to be seen that way. I want to present a highly functioning, put together persona, who is cheerful and fun to be around. No one wants to hang out with Debbie Downer. When I’m feeling blah I tend to keep that under wraps. Everything is or will be okay, is the kind of message I want to project.

But don’t we also get to acknowledge the pain? Doesn’t not talking about it give it more power than it deserves? In trying too hard not let the negative emotions define us, don’t they define us even more? The black elephant in the room no one wants to talk about only grows in our silence. 

What if it’s just casual instead of a huge deal? Depression, anxiety, mental illness, these are things we all deal with on some level. We all have features of those demons in us in some way or another. Some are more willing to acknowledge it than others. Some try to repress parts of them they don't feel are acceptable. Some are less respectful of their negative emotions than their positive. 

But we all deal with darkness, and the more we talk about it the less alone the rest of us feel.

So here’s to those days. The dark, gloomy ones. To the gray skies and rain dripping down our windows. Here’s to accepting the darkness, instead of being ashamed by it. Here’s to learning how to deal with the black elephant in a way that respects it but doesn’t feed its power. 

Stop This Ride, I Want To Get Off!

Some days I wake up to the sun streaming in through my blinds, a warm glow surrounds. I feel rested, inspired, and motivated, like I got this. Things just go right; I’m taking a smooth Ferris Wheel ride up to the top, feel good music playing loud, the smell of carnival popcorn all around. And it feels damn good. 

“You did it! You’re happy,” I tell myself proudly, as if there was something special I did today to make things go well. As though I am the one manning this ride.

The next day, I feel almost as though I have a right to this happiness I created. 

Then there is a kink. There always is. My heart sinks. Something has gone terribly wrong, and the trajectory of my ride has come to a halting stop. My cart has suddenly stopped mid climb, and is swaying. This doesn't feel right. It’s out of my control, and I’m starting to feel powerless. 

Disappointment washes over me when I realize things are not going the way I had planned, one curve ball hitting me after the next. The music stops, and my cart takes a nosedive, falling quickly to the bottom, landing hard and messily.

From rock bottom, I see the top, where my cart once was, where I had gotten to with my own inspiration and hard work, and realize how hard it will be to get back up there. I feel dejected, unmotivated, let down, so incredibly let down, and I don’t know that I even want to attempt to rise back up again. I want to curl up in a ball and take a week long nap, blaming everyone and everything for this fall. 

Who is in charge of this ride anyway!? Why are people not more responsible? I paid for a ride that goes smoothly to the top, and stays there for a decent amount of time. I anticipate the slow and gradual fall that is inevitable,  before going right back up. But changes mid-climb? Oh no. This was not expected.  

Unmet expectations create the hardest falls, and landings most difficult to recover from.  

I know this is where my the work lies. 

I can’t take credit for the days I wake up motivated. That’s a gift from G-d, a head start. Those days are easy. When our expectations are met, it’s not hard to feel good. 

It’s the days where nothing seems to go right. The days you have to draw deep breaths and remind yourself that these curve balls are part of life, and without them, the good would feel mundane. The days that go off your expected plan, those days you have to take a moment to acknowledge the disappointment, tell yourself if's okay to be disappointed, and then decide to just get right back up.  

Turn up the music, pop some corn, try not to anticipate where this ride will take you, and just go with it.