I came across a journal I had started writing two years ago when I was cleaning out a cupboard and this was one of the pieces I had written in it way back then. I have updated it and edited it but perhaps I found it for a reason…..

Circling the drain. I heard this expression on a TV show this week. I didn’t know what it meant to start off with but I actually think it’s a really good analogy. I’d like to say that I NEVER feel like this, but the truth is that I probably feel like this in some way or another just about every day, and in my humble opinion it’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Feeling like you’re circling the drain on a project with a deadline can help spur you on to finish it. Feeling like you’re circling the drain can be a good way of your body telling you it’s time to slow down and take a break. There are definitely times though, that circling the drain can also feel much more pernicious, hopeless and helpless. When you’ve lost a job, a friendship, a family member, are fighting bills you have no way of paying, fighting depression, struggling with self-esteem, struggling with long-term health issues, all of these things can make you feel like your circling the drain.

This last year has seen me up, down, happy, sad, laughing one minute, bawling the next, confident about where my home and work life are heading and then feeling like it was all wrong and wanting to give up on everything. With all of those emotions in the mixing pot, sometimes all in the one day, I do feel like I am circling the drain. The harder I fight, the more resistant I am to it all, the closer I seems sometimes to going down the drain forever.

I once heard someone say that no one can tell you how to feel, but I would argue that anyone who says that has never been on a sustained attack of character. For reasons that don’t need to be aired here, this last 12 months has seen my confidence, self esteem, self worth etc, plummet to it’s lowest ebb. I’ve realised how fickle your reputation really is. In the midst of that I have been grateful for people who truly know and love me, whose knee-jerk reaction to said sustained character assassination is to reassure me that they know the truth, no matter how vicious the attack.

So what do you do? I’ve had to learn to go with the flow. To NOT worry that I might be crying too much or feel like everyone knows everything I’m feeling every second that I’m feeling it and somehow that’s a bad thing. I have learned that I am closer to circling the drain for good by resisting or fighting what I’m feeling than I am by just going with the flow. I may be over the top on occasion, but I’d rather feel however it is I’m feeling than have it all bottled up inside until it becomes too much to bear with all of those bottled-up emotions there just waiting to explode.

I am who I am. I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I’m not going to fight something that is innately me. I don’t think for one second that there aren’t things I can improve on, but there is a big difference between working to improve characteristics that are less becoming than others and fighting who you truly are or being embarrassed about the person you are. I’ve said it before and it is still true, self-pity is a horrible look and I try very hard not to go there. While I don’t think I am fully down the gurgler yet, I don’t know that I’ll ever fully recover from this last twelve months. I think I will always be just a little bit broken. In the same way I will never fully recover from losing Chris the way we did, there are just some things that can’t be completely fixed but just know that even on my worst days (and I’m certain there are still many to come) underneath it all I am fighting to get out the other side. In the meantime, even if I look like I’m circling the drain, I’m just going to go with it and hope that it won’t take me out for good!

Always & Forever….