Tag: worry

Floating

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How many of you are currently living inside of your heads? No matter what’s actually happening, you are just floating through your day to day. You get through each day, functioning, doing your daily tasks but not really living in the present.

Has anyone else started worrying or thinking more about every day things that you wouldn’t have considered before? (“Started” might be the wrong word since covid has been going on for over a year now.) The slightest things I wouldn’t have noticed before stress me out now. Allergies, pain anywhere, a change in anything.

I recently looked up the timeline of the flu of 1918 to find out when things would feel a little bit more normal again. The article I read said that by spring of 1920, it was like it never happened. Overall, it doesn’t seem too bad, 2- 2.5 years of dealing with masks and quarantining. But living through it is harder than sounds. Every step we take is filled with worry and stress. The “what ifs”, the “is this the right choice”, the “should we” haunt us every day and every day after that.

We are living with loneliness even with a house full of people, the personal and professional sacrifices that some of us have made in order to deal with schooling and full time caretaking, and the lack of freedom that comes with thinking about what is necessary for the good of the community. The things that would have alleviated these feelings in the past are not options in the current state of society. The events and celebrations that we would have looked forward to have all but disappeared. We float.

It’s emotional and mentally exhausting. It’s surviving and dealing with small pieces of joy that are incredibly difficult to see. It’s feeling like things will never be okay again. It’s putting one foot in front of the other, while feeding your family, making sure they are safe and mentally okay, and giving them what they need to at least survive, if not thrive. And, in the end, what will each of us be left with?

I’m ready to get my feet back on the ground and move forward. I don’t want to float anymore.

Real World Stuff

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I had to stop going on Twitter and reading the news. Even then, yesterday, I saw a random headline pop out at me on my phone and it completely stressed me out.

What is the world coming to? The funny thing is that I’m completely aware that all of these problems existed before but a combination of I was too young to understand and no internet helped me to live in my bubble.

Now, the bubble has popped. No matter where we are, we are bombarded with information. And honestly, something bad is always happening. It doesn’t help that we are in a time when we have a leader that doesn’t know how to lead.

How does this affect us in our daily lives? For me, it sometimes makes me feel stagnant. I move because I have to but I’d like to crawl up in a ball and just hide until things get better. I have to also keep hope that they will get better but right now, that is definitely hard to see. So I freeze. I don’t know how to feel okay with the way the world is right now but I don’t know how to change it.

Social media also doesn’t help. It seems as though there are people who are still living in their bubble. I know it’s probably not true and they are probably just as worried about the state of things as I am but I wish I could at least feel that carefree sometimes.

I think having kids affects how I feel a lot. I worry about the future of the planet and the future of this county and how they will do within it. There are some days I wish they were still babies so I could keep them home and keep them safe.

Will it be possible to feel okay again? Is this temporary or is this the way we will be living now? Will these worries ever go away? Can we please get some good news for once?

High Anxiety

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Anxiety. It’s one of the most normal and most difficult things to deal with. It can mess with your mind and really affect your overall well-being.

According to the dictionary, anxiety is “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.”

I don’t think I recognized how much anxiety I experienced when I was younger. And it got worse as I got older. I’d sit with all of these negative thoughts in my head without a way to move past them.

It’s not just me either. My sisters and I frequently discuss the anxiety we feel on a daily basis. We discuss what is triggering it and how to deal with it. I believe as we get older, we are more aware of the consequences of our actions and the uncertainty that surrounds making the choices we do.

I find that the best way for me to deal with it immediately is to breathe. I need to get rid of the butterflies and nervousness that is sitting in my stomach. Then, I write. I write about what I’m feeling until it’s out of me. Finding a solution sometimes isn’t the goal. The goal is to realize that no matter what I’m feeling that it will work out. Sometimes, we just have to wait out what we are feeling anxious about. If it’s something I can resolve immediately, I work on it but a lot of times, it’s just the fear of the unknown.

We ave to find a way to trust that we will be okay. There will always be a way to figure out how to feel better. It’s just a matter of not succumbing to the emotions at the moment and feeling despair. You have to just realize that the immediate feeling isn’t what you will be feeling for the rest of your life. It will pass. You just need to find a way to navigate through it.

It won’t be easy especially when you’re in the middle of an anxiety attack. Find your support. Find your breath. Find a way to get to the other side of it.

Doing Something Nice

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The world is a little crazy right now. Okay, let’s be honest. A lot crazy.

It’s enough to give anyone anxiety.

Between that and trying to figure out how to live our own lives in this craziness, it’s easy to worry about yourself quite a bit and forget that we live in a collective world that it’s nice to connect to. So much so that we forget that sometimes the best way to stop worrying is to do something nice for someone else.

The world could use more kindness right now. And we all could use some relief from the stresses that have been popping up.

I can’t remember the last time I did something nice for someone else. I’ve been pretty immersed in my own life. I do know that whenever I have put someone else first, I feel better about the world that we live in today. There is nothing like kindness to help reconnect us. We are able to relate to someone else even if we don’t know them. I know that when I start having intense anxiety about the way people seem to treat each other or have opinions that I don’t agree with, the best solution for me is to go out into the world. As soon as you feel others being kind towards you, it is enough to reassure that most people are still grounded and are just trying to live their daily lives as you are.

Think about how it makes you feel when someone does something nice for you when you least expect it.

Now, with that thought in your head, go out there and do something kind for someone else.

A Letter To My Child

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To my baby,

I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe you’re here. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. Your father and I had to go through a lot before you came but you’re here now. Our perfect little baby.

I finally know what it means to watch my heart walking around outside of my body. The first week or so, one of us had to stay awake while you slept because we wanted to make sure you were okay.  I didn’t know then what I know now,  that you are tougher than you look. But I still always worry when you’re not smiling at me. I still wake up at least 3 times a night to make sure you’re doing fine.

It’s been tough.  We are learning each other and teaching each other at the same time. There are days I’m completely frustrated and exhausted but then, you do something new that I’ve never seen before and forget everything and am in awe again.

I love to fact that you do smile at me now. It feels like you know who I am, even though I’m not sure if you do. I can’t wait to share more with you. I want to laugh with you, dance with you, live with you. I want to teach you everything I’ve learned so you don’t make the same mistakes. I want you to see the world in the best light possible. I want you to always be happy.

I can’t believe I’m writing this letter to you. I hope you get to read it some day. For now, I’ll settle for you being the love of my life. Thank you for coming to us.

Oh NO, I’m caring!

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As I was writing today’s post, I realized that I needed to start a new one. The reason for that was that I was thinking too much about what if I offend someone or they don’t agree with me. So now, somehow, I am caring what people think about what I write. The purpose of this blog was to bring up issues and thoughts that most people won’t say out loud. I am not supposed to censor myself. But here I am, doing exactly that. So I decided to start over and to write about why should I care what people think.

I want people to enjoy what I’m writing about as well as really start thinking about issues that are brought up in these posts. I forget that it’s not all about how many views you have or how many likes you have just because the numbers make me feel validated. It makes me feel like I’m doing something useful in this world when I see a lot of people liking my posts.

Here’s the thing. I’m not doing this for the numbers. That wasn’t my original goal. I’m doing this to talk about things that hadn’t been talked about. And that includes censoring myself for no reason. That includes most of us censoring ourselves because we think someone might not like us or might criticize us.

Why do we worry so much about this? Yes, we should be discerning and tactful in what we say but at the same time, why are we so worried that someone is immediately going to dislike us because we say what is on our minds? Most likely than not, that person is worrying about what he/she will say rather than what you’re going to say.

We all want to be liked, accepted. There are people that will come into your life and will like you and there are people that will not. This happens to everyone. So maybe we should just be confident in what we are trying to say and say it. We know that our intentions are not bad. If someone takes something the wrong way, they can discuss with you and listen to what you actually meant or they can dislike you for it and walk out of your life. At the end of the day, if someone does not like you for something you said (true or not), it is their problem. As long as you are not intentionally being rude or mean, saying what you’re thinking should not be a huge deal. You are allowed to express yourself.

I have learned over the years that if you worry too much about what you say, things get left unsaid. Sometimes, everyone is thinking it and no one wants to say it. Sometimes, it’s that one thought that crosses one mind that can solve a problem or help someone. Sometimes, it might be that one thing that gets said that prevents a bigger problem from happening. I don’t want to make this sound like you’re saving the world by saying what you’re thinking but I still want you to believe that it might. And it might. All of the great people who have fought for freedom or for change are people who didn’t care what others thought and said what needed to be said.

So believe in yourself. Believe in what you have to say. Believe that your words count.