March Madness

I can remember being 7 years old, laying in bed at night, stressing about a book report that was due the following week. I always turned in my homework, studied hard, earned decent grades, never had detention and was even voted "Most Conscientious" in third grade. The thought of procrastinating stressed me out and gave me anxiety. At like, age 10. WTF.

In addition to being intrinsically motivated/slightly insane,  my mom made damn sure that my sister and I wouldn't be anything less than overachieving and successful young women. I call it the "single mom effect." Therefore, she insisted that my sister and I learn how to time manage, work hard, persevere and balance school and life at a very young age. She forced us to go to swim practice when it was pouring rain, early on Saturday mornings and when we had homework. At the time, I hated that all my friends got to be home during the evenings to watch TRL while I had to freeze my ass of and swim for 2 hours. I would get home after 7pm and do homework until bedtime. I did this my entire life. Accountability, serious work ethic and time management was something that was ingrained into our systems; we knew no other way, we embraced it and ended up actually enjoying it (except for the missing TRL part...).

Fast forward quite a few years and the structure of my daily life hasn't changed too much. An unfortunate side effect to living an over-scheduled life and being high anxiety person is the stress that inevitably builds when there's a lot of going on.  I know everyone can relate in some way; a demanding job, a tough class schedule, motherhood, etc. What I've come to realize about myself is that I can handle the pressure well, until I just simply can't anymore. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but it kinda goes like this- I'll take on the damn world without thinking twice about how crazy it will make me. Until that is, the time comes that it actually does makes me crazy. Like, lots of chocolate bars and crying, crazy. And then I say, "WTF was I thinking?!?"

The past month has been Battles Household: March Madness. It goes beyond the shitty class I'm currently taking. It was more than coaching water polo and having a major realization that I'm also a counselor, advocate and friend to these girls- even when it's hard to be-even when I don't know how to be. It went far beyond just showing up to my day job. It's beyond going  20 some days without a day off with no real end in sight. And lastly, it goes beyond the fact that a cop and a coach decided to get married and then never see each other due to the ever changing, never complying, schedules. Ok, so maybe it's all those things combined...or maybe they were just contributing factors to me almost (definitely) losing it.

What really pushed me overboard was having to deal with some unexpected health concern(s) in our home within the same week. Everything is/should/will/hopefully be ok. However, having to face some potentially scary issues really made my anxiety skyrocket.  My stress level was pushed overboard to the point of tears and consumption of copious amounts of chocolate bars...again.

It's amazing that we can go through our lives, knowing what to expect from our daily routine, anticipating a bad day or two here and there, yet, when something scary and unexpected happens, the balancing act goes out the window. Our routine is no longer in place, and sometimes all of it is too much to handle. I broke down. I was exhausted. I slept through my morning workouts and when I was able to workout, I just went through the motions.  I ate chocolate bars for dinner because I was too tired, drained and unmotivated. I justified one too many excuses this past month.

Baby Colt

I do have to say that I'm pretty much back on track now. It helped that we got a new puppy (unexpectedly, but a precious blessing to our home, nonetheless).

I started to feel strong again. I learned that strength isn't something to take for granted. I missed the feeling and hated that I had struggled so hard to find it for a few weeks. I learned that strength never fully leaves you; that experiences and hard times make you stronger, tougher and all around better. Sometimes there are days or weeks or months that weigh us down and make it really hard to fight back. It's not just about waiting out the storm; it's about slowly pushing forward, even in the worst conditions and knowing that it will pass.

I LOVE THIS.

So, even in the height of ugly conditions, I think it's important to maintain some degree of consistency.  For me, it was finding a small block of time to get in a workout, even if it was shitty in comparison to what I can usually do. It was making more than the usual amount of phone calls to my best friend. It was being forced to stop my daily madness to focus on the larger issues at hand with Jared.  I found my priorities and continued to push, even when I was literally weak from life's obstacles. Things calmed down, they got better and I became stronger.

Find the things that keep you focused and somewhat sane, so that you can fall back on them when you're weakened. And...if you need to eat some chocolate to help you feel a little better...well, you know how I feel about that.
I know this isn't a completely typical blog of mine, so if you've actually read through it, thank you! Go be strong, people!