Day 14 - A Lot of Self Reflection

What to say about today…? I guess I’ll say it’s another one that ended pretty poorly. What a joyful way to start, huh? I know I know, but shit happens you guys, especially in 2020. And there’s just a lot of pressure and a lot going on right now. So if I’m being honest and fully transparent…I don’t even want to talk about the day anymore. Even though I was having a really good day. It feels hard to go on about all these good things when, to be quite honest, I’m feeling pretty upset.

I probably will anyway. I’m not sure yet. We’ll see where this piece goes.

I wouldn’t exactly call this joyful, but in this shitty evening, I’ve done a lot of self-reflecting. Lately I’ve been feeling frustrated with I guess just myself? And holding myself together? I went from therapy once a month, to once a week for a while there. And from feeling super confident and good about myself to hating what I saw in the mirror and not feeling like I’d grown enough emotionally. Well if anything good has come out of the night, I know that my progress is still there. This last year has been all about “boundaries”. As an empath, it’s really hard to set those boundaries. I want to absorb everyone’s feelings and take them on and feel them 10 times stronger. So I have to be hard and fast about setting that barrier and saying, “Okay girl, that’s far enough. Time to turn that switch off for a bit.” To hold those feeling and emotions and feel those things, and get in that hole with someone, but then take a breath, and know when to let it leave. To tuck it away and file it so it can be accessed next time I need it, but not sitting there clouding everything I do. And you know what? I’m really good at it. I’m not even going to say “I think I am.” I am definitviely saying, “yeah, I have gotten really good at doing that.” Because here’s the thing, how can you help someone if you’re sitting in there just as dazed and confused as they are? How can you help someone who is in the red zone, if you are also in the red zone? You can’t. It’s partly self-preservation and partly you ensuring that you can still be a support to someone. So I guess that was pretty cool. To recognize that I still feel all those things, and carry that sadness, but now I know what to do with it and how to control it. It’s like Elsa - she had so much power and she let it overwhelm her and take so much control over her life, that she ended up hurting people by mistake. But when she learned to control it and harness it, she used it to save people’s lives. How’s that for an analogy?

Anyway…now that I’ve got that out of my system….today was good. I got up early and started work late. I ate a candy cane ice cream bar. Work was fun and busy. I wore a bow in my hair and candy cane earrings. When I got home we ate one of my Mom’s signature meals called “Porcupines” (because when you cook them the rice sticks up like spikes on a porcupine), and also I drank some champagne.

The end. (you get pictures at the end today because putting them before my big speech felt weird).