Facets

730am found my eyes open, and I laid there in my semi dark room, the daylight barely filtering through my curtains. I knew I needed to get up and get moving. Instead I laid there under my blankets, warm and comfortable for the better part of forty five minutes, just thinking. I lay in the quiet and dark, with the warm softness of my blanket surrounding me, knowing that there were things to do. Nothing had a set time to be done by though, so I could do this instead. I could take a second to let my brain do what it does best.

Finally satisfied with where my head was at, I slowly stretched my way up to a sitting position. Feeling stiffness still in my legs I decided on yoga. I got up, yanked the bedding off my bed to be washed, threw on yoga clothes. . . Lit my candles, threw my hair up, went and got water, and did a short practice. I picked up a few random items laying around my room when I finished, and headed out to the kitchen to make myself something to eat. With the smell of coffee brewing and eggs cooking, with music pouring out of my Bluetooth speaker, I was happy. I was happy with everything in my life, and the direction I could see it going. I felt better than I had in a couple weeks, and my mind was finally less confused, and less anxious. Between the holidays being over and a little less uncertainty in my life, with the cold that keeps coming and going mostly gone, I could breathe a little easier – literally and figuratively.

I kicked ass yesterday. I washed bedding and I cleaned and swept and mopped. I took down Christmas decor and made a meal plan and a grocery list, I went to the grocery store and paid brothers bills. I went out to Sophia’s and we exchanged Christmas gifts and hung out for a couple hours, and then I got home and started dying my hair, and out of the blue I was bothered. No evident rhyme or reason, just not happy. I went from being absolutely content to being ridiculously annoyed. It made no sense. Nothing had changed from the morning to that moment in time.

Sometimes though, this is me. Sometimes I go from one extreme to another. I go from on top of the world and loving everything to hating the sound of someone breathing in the next room. I go from feeling like I’m unstoppable to wishing I could crawl into a hole and never come out.

And so I crawled into bed and burrowed back under my covers. Back into the warm, dark, softness. I smelled the freshly laundered smell of my bedding and closed my eyes and dived back into my head to try and figure it out.

The glass is at minimum always half full, and on my worst days, in my worst moments, I know the glass is at least refillable. So I took a moment to let the glass refill. I laid there for an hour pouring over my thoughts and feelings, analysing what could have flipped my mood so drastically.

I didn’t come up with much, other than maybe I put too much pressure on myself. Other than maybe I just got overwhelmed. I envisioned a box. A box that holds everything I think and I feel. And it’s not an airtight box, because I do let thoughts and feelings out. I don’t bottle everything up. But there are things I keep close, things I don’t let others see. And maybe the box got a little full, and maybe with no safe way to release it I just got pissed for no reason. It’s the closest thing I could come up with. So, instead of shoving all of that shit back into the box, I thought about everything. I thought of all the reasons, all of the people, that I have in my life and why I am so fucking lucky to have who and what I do. People that accept me for who I am, even when I’m not okay. People that know when to give me my space, and know what to say and how to say it to help me clear my head. My kids and my home and my brother and my job. . . Even though each adds a level of responsibility to my life, it also adds a source of joy. And I’m grateful that I can step back when I’m overwhelmed and see that it’s all so worth it. I’ll take my overwhelmed moments so long as I have all of this good to fall back on and lift me back up.

And my God, it could be so much worse. Life has been so much worse. I remembered that times have been harder, and counted my blessings. But even happy people, even people who have a good life, are allowed to have negative feelings. So I tried not to beat myself up about that. Because no one’s life is perfect, no one’s life is without its stress. And even the most famous, even the wealthiest people, even the happiest people have their bad moments, too.

This is the shit we don’t see, folks. This is the shit people hide. When it’s late at night and they feel close to breaking and get up the next day and do it all again. When the smile hides the worry. When the laugh hides the anger. I have had so many people come to me and say I’m brave for putting my thoughts and feelings out there for anyone to read. . . I do it to not only help myself, but to help others understand. To understand that there’s more to a person than what you see, more to a person than what they say and how they look. That everyone has a story, that everyone has thoughts and feelings that maybe you don’t know about. I’m lucky enough to be able to put mine into words, but not everyone is. Some people have a form of art they can turn to – music or painting maybe, or like for me, it’s writing. Maybe they go to the gym to work it out. Maybe they turn on the TV to escape from it. The thing is, we don’t know another’s battles, we don’t know another’s insecurities and inner thoughts and how they cope. I share so maybe it opens a person’s eyes. So people can know they aren’t alone, so people can look beyond what is on the surface. People are more than what they speak, people are more than how they carry themselves. The bravest person you know probably has moments of fear, and the smartest person you know maybe feels less than intelligent at times. The most attractive likely see every physical flaw, and the kindest have an occasional unkind thought. This is what makes us human. We are multi-faceted. You can’t see all sides of a person. We are all unique, and the beauty of a person is that you can never know everything, there’s always something more to learn.

Take a moment for yourself today, to think about the things you don’t often allow yourself to think about. And take a moment to think about your perceptions of others. What you see isn’t always the whole story. Happy Sunday.