Tiny Victories Challenge – I am the one

As I sit here, finally deciding to post something, I counted the weeks since my last entry. TEN NOW ELEVEN WEEKS.

This realization sucks.

I knew it had been a while now since the pandemic hit and everything ceased but, counting the number of weeks required me to face the time that had passed head on.

The truth is, I did attempt to write and post something several times before this. I think when the world shut down, my already fragile ego couldn’t handle it. For the first few weeks after the “Stay at Home” order was issued in Delaware, I wasn’t sure I would receive my paycheck or if I even still had a job.

As more information about the seriousness of COVID-19 began to be reported, I found myself bouncing back and forth between avoidance and paralyzing fear. While I knew I had hypochondriac tendencies due to a lifetime of shitty immunity (I was one of those lucky ones who contracted Swine Flu, #Swine09), I didn’t consider myself paranoid.

Today, my hands are so dry from all the hand washing my skin doesn’t even feel like my own anymore. There is a hard line between my wrists and the tops of my hands where the extreme lack of moisture begins.

Last week, I returned to work. Grateful for an income but incredibly twisted inside over the constant battle between, “What is me being responsible and, what is me being compulsive?”

Thankfully, on the outside, I tend to appear that I’m fine. No one ever really notices if I’m sleep deprived (except maybe my husband who I do my best to communicate with – and of course when I finally crack in the privacy of our own home and sleep an entire weekend away because my brain stopped racing long enough for me to enter the dreaded haze/fog which renders me useless). So, life goes on. And, I am grateful for life.

I don’t really know what else to say right now but I felt like I had to publish something to remind myself that, AS ALWAYS, I’m the only one really stopping me. I am the one telling myself mean things. I am the one that decides I shouldn’t bother. I am the one who criticizes myself relentlessly. I am the one who is telling myself, “NO”.

Today I chose to tell my ego to SHUT THE F*CK UP and I wrote this.

Most every human I know deals with this to some degree as well so, if you are, I hope you are able to decide to do whatever it is you want to do today for yourself too. I know it’s not easy, but you deserve to live the life you want to live and you shouldn’t have to apologize for it.