Mental & Emotional Health

…psychopathy has to wait…

EwokMama entered the Question Contest asking me a pretty specific and personal question. Honestly these are my favorite types to answer since it takes less research and it fulfills the narcissistic side of my writing needs!

“I am wondering what it is like to wake up one day as Sarah when you are having a rough time with one of your afflictions (your choice). I.e. describe a bad day, and then the next day when you turn things around.”

First of all, I’m seriously excited to answer this question. Besides that narcissism thing I talked about earlier, I can’t really tell you why I’m so excited, though! /randomness … back to question

On Tuesday morning I woke up physically, emotionally and mentally feeling like poo. When my body hurts, my mind seems to hurt as well, and so I knew I was in for a doozy of a day. I called in sick to work (which made me feel guilty) but I realized that if I don’t take care of myself a) no one else will and b) I’ll be even sicker in the long run. (This is something I’ve been working on re-training myself to think about, and I’m getting better at it!) So, after calling in sick, I only let myself sleep until 9am because the guilt continued. I sat around for quite a while before realizing that a shower might make me feel better. Soon after my shower, the tears started. I was feeling down about work, down about finances, down about being single, just down in general. I talked to a friend online, and then dialed my mom. I cried on the phone with her, and she told me to “put [my] big girl panties on and deal with it.” That’s exactly what I did. Instead of dwelling on my woes, I decided to be proactive. I worked on my blog, getting entries ready to go for the rest of the week; I put out feelers for a temporary part-time job; I edited photographs that have been waiting to see me for almost two weeks and I tried to keep myself busy. This helped immensely. I met a friend for dinner and we had some good giggles (did you know that apple juice bottles are 1/2-impossible for normal humans to open?) and that also helped.

When I have days like this, I try to write in my journal about that day and then move on before sleeping (so that I can sleep!) and the last sentence I write is; “I will make tomorrow a better day!” Then, since I’ve been meditating before falling asleep, that is the mantra I put through my head while I’m listening to my music. “Make tomorrow better. Make tomorrow better. Make tomorrow better.”

When I woke up on Wednesday, after making the alarm (Lily Allen’s Smile) shut up, (oh but how I love that song!) the first thing I thought of was “Make today better!” and I did just that. Instead of dwelling on what I had felt on Tuesday, I continually reminded myself that “today is a new day” and I do have the power to make my day go however I want.

For the record, Wednesday was a great day!

mental and emotional health, contests, questions, personal, feeling down, picking yourself up, Lily Allen, making the day better