A redirect

I've started a new journey--a journey that is focusing on healing myself mentally and emotionally, while I struggle with increasing and worsening physical health and pain. Everyday, I will blog. Everyday, I will be given a quote and a prompt that I have to reflect on to work towards a healthier lifestyle. I go back to a different doctor tomorrow for my pain.

Yesterday: "It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis." 

Assignment: Today, consider what "happily ever after" means to you. Can you have a little of that today? 

In a word, "happily ever after" means "freedom." Freedom from the pain. Freedom from the medication. Freedom from the frustration and agony associated with the chronic illness. Freedom from not knowing. My freedom yesterday was allowing myself to just relax. To give myself a day to heal and the freedom to feel the emotions of frustration and try to move forward.

Today: "We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them." 

Assignment: What has been "shaking" you that you might be ready to see as a spiritual opportunity? 

This assignment was hard on me. It's hard for me to see the negatives in my life as a way that God is speaking to me to strengthen my faith. However, with the increase of my pain, I'm doing by absolute best to remember that the pain in my life, given to me, is pain that I know I can handle. Even when I'm on the floor in pain and feel like I've reached my breaking point--I always find more strength.

When I was laid off last week, my whole world shook. I had no idea where I was going to go next, I still have no idea where things are going to go from here. I've had one interview, two rejection letters and over two dozen applications were sent out--and I'm still applying. I'm going stir-crazy doing nothing all day, I'm doing Internet surveys to pass the time because I'm that desperate. I'm working out as much as my body can handle and I'm detoxing in the sauna as I can, too. As much as I would like to be working and need to be working in order to support myself--I can't help but wonder if this was God's way of telling me to slow down and take a look at my life. I was in a job that I didn't go to school for, and while I absolutely adored and loved the people I had the honor of working with every day, my heart just wasn't in that job. So perhaps that life shaking was God's way of saying "Wake up, Katie. It's time to find me again. It's time to get back on the path that I have made for you."

I believe this is going to be a good journey for me. I think this is going to be what I need to heal.

Love and hugs.

Struggling

Clearly, it's been a difficult month.

Other than the time that I've taken off for my grandmother's funeral and then time for Thanksgiving--I haven't missed work. Even when I was out of town for the visitation and funeral, and even surrounding Thanksgiving, I was working. I'm constantly thinking about work and I'm constantly worried about work--what am I worried about, work related, you ask?

I'm worried that I'm going to lose my job. I'm worried that the fact that I'm struggling right now and that I've made mistakes, that I will be looked at as incompetent and I'll get that call into the office and "the talk."

Anxiety has consumed me, as of late. Will I keep my job? Will I be able to sleep tonight? If I don't start getting any sleep, I'm going to get sick again. I have another appointment with my psychiatrist tomorrow--do I tell her that I think I need to be put on an anti-depressant, instead of just something for my anxiety and deal with the consequences from my family? Or do I just bite the bullet and hope it gets better? Can I deal with this any longer without the medicine? Does that make me weak? Do I actually run to drug therapy like someone says I do?

I can tell you what I do know.

I'm tired. All I want to do is sleep, but I can't. If I don't take some sort of sleep aid, I will not sleep. The ambien isn't helping anymore--so that medicine is going to have to be changed. Every step I take feels like a million pounds--I feel a lot heavier, and I have no willpower to do anything. Taking a shower is exhausting. Going to work and sitting at my desk and working my eight hour shift is exhausting (and I'm just SITTING and looking at a computer!). The thought of going to the grocery store and cooking dinner just feels unrealistic in the sense that I just have no desire to do it--I just want to sit. I want to sit and do nothing. I love my coworkers and (most days) I love my job--they keep me going most of the time--but going out with them on a Friday after work is socially terrifying to me--and that's not me. I was always called the "social butterfly" growing up, and now I don't even want to go out with some of the closest people I have in Des Moines--and I can't really tell you why.

I think about going back to school to get my masters or above, and I can't do it. I talk myself out of it, even though I've always known, going into journalism, that I'd want to get my masters. But it's expensive. It's time consuming. I can't make my schedule work with it. I don't think I'd get in. I don't think I'd pass. Bottom line: I would fail and I cannot handle failure right now.

I haven't been this low in awhile, and I'm definitely going in between being high and low--and that scares me. The people in my life are only going to be so patient with me, and I feel like their patience is already running thin. I can already hear it now...

I mean, honestly, who actually suffers that much loss? 
I can't handle being around her anymore, she's suffocatingly depressing. 
What is wrong with her? Why is she so upset now?
Why can't she just get over it? 
She's not herself anymore and I just don't like to be around her anymore. 
She's being so dramatic about everything. She needs to just grow up and get over it--it's time for her to face the reality of being an adult. 
She didn't know Kelley and Mary extremely personally like she did her grandmother, she shouldn't be as upset as she is. 

I can go on...and on....and on. Why? Because I've heard it all before and it would not surprise me if I heard it all again.

I apologize for the pessimism in this post...with everything I've endured this month, it's hard for me to see optimism or a positive end result.

*sigh*

I think it's time for me to get help. If you can do it, so can I, right?