Like to the depths of my soul done. I wasn’t sure what that meant at first. Was it exhaustion? Constant overwhelm?
I only knew that I felt a deep need to escape… everything.
The truth is, I was so good at getting things done that I barely noticed that I stopped taking care of myself. And I know I am not alone in this. We do this as we grind away at our lists. We are thirsty, ignored. Hungry, ignored. And tired. We don’t hear that tiny voice in our head anymore asking for some attention. But ignoring our own needs while caring for others comes at a cost.
This little tug asking for help is pushed into the background but does not go away.
We may shush our brains as we push through our days, but our body remembers. It keeps score. And as we become more and more overwhelmed, that tiny voice will grow louder and louder, until it quite literally becomes impossible to ignore.
It took me some time before I heard this voice and even more time before I paid attention to it. All I did know in the beginning was that I wanted out. In every situation, I had this underlying feeling of looking for an escape. Every conversation — playing with my children, talking with friends — all of it was reduced to how can I get out of here?
That is where this noticing began — and became hard for me. How can I want to escape lunch with friends? I had planned this for weeks. Why didn’t I want time with my children?
Am I a bad mom?
As I started to notice the discomfort in my body, my head soon turned it into words. I’m done. With all of this. And as I pushed through — like usual — that voice became louder and louder. Until it finally came to a head, standing in a hallway, yelling at a co-worker.
Ignoring our needs does not make them go away. It makes us feel as if we have disappeared. We feel less, shut down more. Until our body finally takes control and demands our attention.
Something needed to change. I decided right then and there, in that hallway, that I would sit there in that moment and listen — really listen — to what I needed. No one can pour from an empty cup. I had to fill mine first.
And that’s how I started to come back to myself. By finally caring for what I needed too.
We are allowed to do this — to honor what we need as well. It does not make us bad people. It does not make us selfish.
Acknowledging my thoughts initially was hard, they were a jumbled, swirling mess. A lot of emotions began to surface and I didn’t know what to do with them. Writing helped. Sitting with them — writing them out as they rose up — helped me start to understand what I was feeling. Journaling has allowed me to explore what my body has been trying to tell me all along. This is how I began.