It never rains but it pours

There is a very real sense of pain that comes with a broken heart. My entire being feels sluggish, it feels like my body is not my own anymore but that of an old person because my movements start to slow down, my joints start to ache, and there is this feeling of being cold all the time and feeling tired. There is no motivation to do anything despite the knowledge that one has to. I feel weighed down and I feel the need to sit down, lie down, and cover, to cocoon for safety. My muscles are tense and tightened so I physically feel like my heart is hurting. I feel like a chasm opens inside of me and I am on the edge of it for ages trying to hold on, trying to avoid it. I start slipping inside of it. A sea of endless sadness finds me at the bottom, and it is so overwhelming, that it encompasses everything that ever was and everything that could ever be. I start to cry, and I let it all out, I accept that I am feeling like this now. Before I would try to put an end to it, stop it, run away from it, and I would make myself so busy that I wouldn’t remember what I was feeling, but now, I accept that this is my current state. I need to ride those waves of sorrow and remember that in the same way, happiness is not forever, neither will sadness be.

There are moments when it becomes so hard to reach out to people. It is not that I don’t think of them, I do. I think of them, I think of what I want to say, I think of how wonderful they are when they talk to me, and how I would like to know how they got on with things from the last time. I want to be in their presence, even if it is virtual because they are so important to me but, then I stop myself. I consider what I have to offer when I am down. All I have is this feeling of emptiness. This feeling of being out of time and out of the normal flow of existence. I feel like my entire universe has slowed down and I am not a part of existence anymore. Life happens around me while I am very much wrapped up in my thoughts. The passage of time is surprising and there is this strong sense that life just passes by, uninterested in my individual story. What is a speck of dust in the grand scheme of the universe? It is not that I don’t want to talk to people, it is that I become convinced that I have nothing to offer but sadness. I am conscious of my energy and how I can pollute other people.

The loss of energy also manifests outwardly. I stopped having the energy to clean my house so, it looks like an absolute disaster. My dishes go unwashed, my clothes are wherever I dumped them. My inner life spills outwards and I just let it be whatever it needs to be in that moment. I then start to feel that it is draining to be in a space like that. It becomes claustrophobic and I start to clean the house frantically. It starts with, I will feel a lot better if I just put this back where it belongs. Well, since I put that thing back, I should try to put another one that is in the same area. Fast forward to two hours later when I am scrubbing things at 2 o’clock in the morning because if my house is clean then maybe it means I am fine. I cannot control my life, but I can control my space. Completing tasks also gives me a sense of achievement so it helps with self-esteem, as well.

The same goes for washing myself. When I lived with other people, I had times when I was planning to go take a shower for hours and another person just goes before me while I am totally paralyzed. I have had days with just sitting on the couch and looking like I am watching TV but in my head, I thought: “Go and take a shower. It is not that big of a deal. It takes only 5 minutes. Just go” I would visualize the entire experience. Walking into the bathroom, taking my clothes off, going into the shower, drying off. Knowing full well that once I will do it, I will feel amazing, warm, and refreshed. Watched the clock, decided that I would do it in 5 minutes, and then realized that the brain has been doing that for hours, and then this person comes in just out of nowhere, able to take a shower as soon as they thought of it. From the outside, it seems like I am a sloppy person when in fact, I care a lot about it. Sometimes, small things like that just get overwhelming.

I started therapy, I have taken the pills, I have done more therapy, I introspected, I read books, I have accepted everybody as a teacher and the biggest lesson of all is that this is a process. This is not something that can be cured with a one-size-fits-all approach but it is something that can be managed better and improved upon. Today, I am well off on my journey. I have hard days that I accept and I know that tomorrow will be better. I have days in which I feel so bad that I feel like I have made no progress at all or ever. I can go from everything is awesome to none of this is worth it in 5 minutes. And then once the storm passes, I can look, and I can see that I have made progress. I noticed the signs sooner than before. I have stepped out of the pattern that hurts me and used the good practices that I have in place to get myself on the other side. I am fortunate that I have people that support me. That keeps me accountable and lets me be who I am.

One of the most important parts of my life is my dog, Bruno. Some people say that Bruno is just a dog. Somebody implied that my happy-go-lucky, live-in-the-moment, big-hearted, beautiful dog is stupid. He is nothing but. He has shown me such immense love. He has accepted me as I am, and he has not given me any less love if I was happy or sad. He and his puppy friends have made such a difference in keeping me afloat by bringing me a toy to play with so that it breaks my thought cycle, and I stop ruminating and overthinking, to asking for a walk so, I get out of the house. I always feel happier when I see him jumping around and enjoying himself. He does this thing where he will be asleep in another room, wake up and he will come looking for me. If he sees me on the couch, he will come over and smell my face to see what my pheromones tell him about my mood and if I am all right, he will give me a lick on the nose and then go and watch the neighbours out the window. If he sees that I am down, he will get me to hug him and he will lick my tears to comfort me, if I resist, he will physically sit on me. That is his way of saying that he is there for me no matter what. That he is not giving up on me so, neither should I.

I was with Bruno walking one day and I found these glass marbles. I picked them up because I thought they were a choking hazard. Bruno had smelled them, but another dog might swallow them. I was playing with them in my pocket while I was thinking about everything happening that week. As I kept on doing it again and again, my focus started to change to them. To the sound, they made as they ground together, to the cold feeling of them in my hand, their weight and size. A smile slowly started to blossom on my face. I had realized that for the past two years of my life, I had lost my marbles and here I was just having found them. The universe always has a way of reminding you that you are in the right place, at the right time. I am not sure where my destination lies but, I know that I have the full power of making my happily ever after a reality.