Positive Updates are the Best Updates

Things are finally looking up a little bit so far this year.  Jason and I became a little more financially stable recently and are looking forward to paying off some of our debts so that we aren't living paycheck to paycheck anymore.  Simba and Isabelle are considerably stable with their health issues for now.  My autonomic attacks have reduced significantly in frequency and severity, though they do still happen.  I should be able to work with the sleep doctor a little better once I get my sleep study results back to get relief from unrested sleep which will hopefully in turn reduce my chronic fatigue and my anxiety even more.  We booked our trip to Tennessee for the end of October a couple weeks ago.  My mom is coming out the second week in August to visit and spend some time with us.  I'm in the process of taking leadership and development classes at my job as well as I've had both my phone and in-person interview for Suture Specialist.  I've been filling in unofficially as a specialist for the last three months.  I should hear in a few weeks on whether I got the job or not.

The first Friday in February, I'm starting the process of getting my Alice in Wonderland half sleeve done - finally!  It's going to take about twenty hours of work to complete.  This will be my first time sitting eight hours for a tattoo - a little excited and nervous at the same time.  I've already filed my taxes.  So yeah, I'd say that things are going pretty decent.  Jay's dads birthday is this coming Friday, so we are going over his house Saturday to take him out to eat and have cake with him.  I started back going to therapy this week.  I have plans to go every other week.  My next plan is to develop a self-care plan to work on my overall health.  I haven't been keeping up with my water intake that well lately, so I'm definitely going to be improving that.  I'm thinking about switching my morning breakfast to drinking a Premier Protein shake and watching my carb consumption a little better.  In the next few weeks, I'm going to start incorporating some low-impact exercising throughout the week after work.  I would also like to come up with a dedicated skincare routine.

I'm hoping I can keep up with my blog better, especially to track my progress.  I've been battling keeping up with this thing for years and I'm not sure why.  I love journaling and find it to provide a sense of stress relief.  Plus, my therapist highly recommends regular journaling as a tool to reduce anxiety, depression and stress.  Well, that's all I have for todays post.  I'm going to put my Salisbury meatballs in the fridge, relax for the night and maybe peruse Kindle to see what kind of books I can get into reading.  Not to mention, we have been talking about where we want to go for my first trip of a lifetime benefit at work - definitely out of the country!  I get a trip of a lifetime every five years that I work for my company and each five years, they give you more money towards it.  We are thinking about going to Europe, possibly Rome!

Alright.  Ta-ta for now!

Self-Intervention

It's been a hard few months.

I've been dealing with chronic medical issues all the while trying to come up with a plan on how I'm going to heal.  The biggest person I have let down over the years is myself which led me to face a lot of hard truths.  I've been worried about everyone and everything else other than myself and that has reflected in my current circumstances with both my mental and physical health which has caused issues in my relationship with God, Jason and both my professional and personal life.  This year was definitely the straw that broke the camels back and it caused me to be at my wits-end.  I've had some time to stew on my thoughts and I'm not sure if I lost myself completely at some point in the process or if I've never had the chance to meet my true sense of self to begin with - to be honest, I'm not really sure I know how to tell the difference which I think is the barrier I struggle with in determining which one really took place.  At this point, however, I feel that trying to wrap my head around which one it is, is irrelevant because either way leads me on a journey with the same purpose which is finding myself.  Either way, I have to take time to heal and discover the person I truly am.

As I sit here and reflect, I've come to realize that I have given up a lot in neglecting myself.  I have given up on my health all together, self-care, my worth, family, friends, things that make me happy and at times - my professional life, my relationship with God and Jason.  Because of my lack of self-worth, I've allowed things that I should have never allowed.  Mostly, I let other's and their opinions live rent free in my head causing all kinds of manifestations of negative inner dialogue.  I've felt the incessant need to justify myself to others when it comes to their expectations of how I should be living my life and/or what I should or should not be doing.  I've been over-exerting myself in trying to keep the peace for everyone else that I allowed it to create nothing but total chaos and havoc in my life.  I've reached the point where I can't hold up this facade any longer.  I had to reach deep within myself to realize that I deserve better, to realize that I'm worthy of living my best life just like the next person.  After all I have been through, I deserve at least that much.  My therapist has been an integral part of helping me come to these realizations.  Though medication is still in the trial and error process for me at the moment, it has definitely helped balance me out a bit better and though I still have autonomic attacks from time to time, they have lessened in both frequency and severity which has allowed me the opportunity to think with a much clearer mind and provide me with some form of mental stability.

These issues didn't appear over night, so this journey will be nothing short of the same and that's okay.  After all of these years, I deserve to take this journey of self-love and care.  It's okay to be in a place of brokenness as long as we don't stay there forever.  This turmoil stemmed from early childhood and I've just let it take complete rein over my entire life.  It's time for me to bury the hatchet within myself and begin this journey.  That's not to say that I will not help other's when they are in need and of course, when I'm able, but more so, that I need to set myself as a priority first and foremost.  There are many, many things that I need to allow myself time to feel and heal from.  We live in a world where we really should and need to normalize that it's okay not to be okay and that we may need help at times.  It's nothing to be embarrassed about as we are all human.  With all of this being said, I don't have any specific New Years resolutions because for me, it's not about achieving a specific goal in a certain frame of time.  This journey that I'm about to take isn't something that can be achieved in just a years time - it's something that will unfold over the course of the rest of my life.  However, I will be taking this coming year to focus strictly on myself and the ground work necessary for this journey.

Things that I will be working on going forward:

Relationship with God, Jason, family and friends

Self-love, self-care and my health both physically and mentally

Changing the way I think/talk to myself

Paying off debts and saving money

Professional life

Working on our house

Engaging in things that make me truly happy (blogging, going out more, spending more quality time with Jay, reading, listening to music, painting, traveling trying new things)

Letting go (of my past, letting people live rent free in my head, being a people pleaser, worrying what others think of me, grief of losing my mother-in-law and my father, worrying excessively for no reason)

Allowing myself to feel and be truly happy

Creating a safe space for me in my spare-room where I can have time to myself