It's okay to not be okay.

It was around about 7 pm today, when I ended up in tears in the office that I realised I needed to write this post. Because I had started the day with a super cheerful dance to Grace Potter and The Nocturnals' "The Lion, The Beast and The Beat"; and yet it got to 7 pm, and I was doing Financial Reporting coursework, having finished work-work, and I started to cry.

Nothing had happened. In fact, the coursework was easier than the other half that I had done over the weekend had been; and I'd had a reasonably productive day, and the sun was still shining, and yet suddenly, I started crying.

And when you end up in tears at work when even one other person is there? (Especially if the someone is a manager you get along with well?) You end up having to use some words to say that actually, you're struggling a bit with being a grown-up; even if you don't know how to phrase that, or what it is about being a grown up that you're struggling with.

And that right there is the point of this.

Sometimes, you have days when you are not okay. Days at a time, full weekends, full weeks, even. Days when you wake up paralysed at the thought of doing things. Days when you feel you have so much to do, but cant't seem to get started; so you just lie there, your head willing you to move, and just not being able to. Days when, apparently, you make toast and forget about it, and only find the toast a whole week later when your sister comes to stay. (True story.) (There were tears upon finding the piece of toast.) Days when you have preemptively set your alarm about 2 hours earlier than it needed to be, because you knew you'd probably have to just lie there for 2 hours to talk yourself into getting up.

And the thing is: that is okay.

Because then you have days when you roll out of bed and you think, "HELL YEAH! I'VE GOT THIS." And those are the ones that mean you keep moving forwards.

You've got this.

Here is to remembering it is okay to sometimes not be okay. It is okay to ask for help. It is okay to cry in front of people you really don't want to cry in front of; because if they are half-decent human beings, they will ask how they can help.

You've got this.
Yes, you CAN.

Promise.

"NOTHING CHANGES IF NOTHING CHANGES"

Warning: this post will read rather cryptically to some, because part of it is not my story to tell. However, they are thoughts I need to get out on "paper", as it were; and so, here we are: cryptic blog posts which, if you know me in real life, are not that cryptic anyway.

I started writing this in November, after a sermon in church on 2 Kings 7:34: "3 Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? 4 If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’—the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die." But I was too afraid at the time to follow through with what I was going to say I was going to do, and put off this post.

Because, you see, until just over a year ago, I had been wondering what to do about a particular situation for a long time. I had been unhappy for a long time, but because I had felt that the moments of happiness - and various other feelings - which broke up the undercurrent of unhappiness were enough to outweigh it, I hadn't ever had the courage to do anything about it. Moreover, doing something about it would have meant admitting that I had been wrong to get into that particular situation start with; and that was something that my pride could not deal with.

However, just over a year ago, a series of events combined to push me into doing something about it. And so I tried to do something about it. It was painful and awkward and frustrating and wasn't able to happen in the way I had wanted it to happen, and I was never sure if what I did had been understood. But I was certain I had extracted myself from the situation.

Except that I hadn't. Not really. Immediately kept myself busy with other things: a wedding first, then being in Another Country, meeting friends, working a lot, and then suddenly... travel! friends! concerts! meeting new people! more travel! strange encounters with people! more travel! planning a New Life! moving to New City! new job! new people! kissing! friends! so much studying! exams! dates! more exams! more travel! running! church! ALL OF THE THINGS! I thought, hey look at me, being an adult and moving on with my life and moving forward and all of the things! 

And because you are filled with courage, and they seem to have moved on too, you think, hey, maybe I'm finally ready to talk about things. Again.

Until one day you wake up and you realise that in spite of an attempt to make a Big Change and follow through with it and getting out of a situation which is absolutely not right for you and is killing you and is simply not making you happy, you haven't entirely let go of the past; but that you need to, because "Nothing changes if nothing changes" and you are miserable once again because you’ve fallen into a similar situation. Again.

My first entry on this blog was about lessons I had learned in 2012. They were all about moving forward, and not surrounding yourself with people who bring you down. I firmly believe, will all of my might, that that is what I should have been doing, and kept doing. Because when you try, after time apart, to communicate with someone, but you end up mis-communicating with them repeatedly, in a way which is reminiscent of the reasons you had for leaving that situation in the first place; you end up right back where you started.

And so you have a choice:

Either you stay in limbo, waiting, again, for something to change, while being continuously underlying-ly miserable - again. 

Or you take charge, following inspiration from Kings, following the lessons of a God who doesn't let you go: "If we stay here, we die!" said the lepers from Kings. "If we go, we might die too!" "Oh well," they decide, "at least we'll have tried!"

And so you decide that you've had enough of it, and that you will try something new: change. And you give the other parties involved an ultimatum, and when they don’t meet it, you follow through with change. Because you decide that, in spite of how hard it is for now, and how drastic it may seem to the other parties involved, you will change. Because you are miserable as things stand. So you decide that you will plough through with option two; with all that it involves - including finding a way to let go of the past entirely - and change.

"Nothing changes if nothing changes."

Here is a toast to facing fears and to jumping in with both feet. 

Here is to freedom in change. 

Here is to change.