Do you ever have those moments where you’re all, I’ve been here before? 

And then you’re all, oh shit – I’ve been here before and it’s horrible

I had a bit of a flash back this weekend. It started on Thursday. I had a longish day prepping for a long week, and I came home all rarin’ to go on my story. Instead I ate way too much croque monsieur sandwich (hello new favourite thing) and too much cocoa and too many cookies and I had to crawl into bed at 8:45 so full of food I made myself sick because living life to it’s fullest means complete and utter over indulgence a la the Romans in the face of my dairy allergy that I constantly convince myself I don’t have. I had a blog planned, and a free write scheduled, but I didn’t even crack open my computer. I fell asleep, woke up at 3:30AM angry at work, and didn’t go back to sleep until 6:15.

When I woke 15 minutes later from my peaceful, blissful minute slumber by the shrieks of my alarm, I had one of those overwhelming feelings that this is the start of a day that ends in either emptying several bottles of Jack Daniels into my face and hiding under my blanket watching Project Runway, or several faces getting punched before said emptying of bottles and Auf-wiedersehen. Either way, TGI-Fucking-F.

Joel bribed me to go to work with ibuprophen, a take away coffee, $5, and a pack of Oreos. Because he’s an angel baby sent from Heaven. And from the minute I walked into work, it was fires, fires, fires. Nothing I couldn’t handle, but just all the shit I didn’t want to handle because I had more pressing things to take care of. I thought to myself, “it’s ok, I’ll just write the SOP over the weekend while I’m at home and I’ll get it done and over with. It’s one weekend out of my life and it’ll be done.”

That night, I was surprisingly still wrapped up in how badly the day went. I had that frozen stomach feeling and I couldn’t even finish my chilli dog at dinner. THE HORROR.

In my quasi-frozen state, I started scanning through my old Instagram pics. Because of course I did. I found a post from early March last year, where I was all excited because I wrote a story and had gotten back on the horse and how amazed I was at my new outlook on life. A week later I had a post reminding myself that everything would be ok and it wouldn’t always be so shit. In the space of a week, I had dropped my entire basket.

And then I had this thought – holy shit, I’m at the point last year where everything went to shit, and I’m giving myself the same mantra. That mantra that led me to getting so keyed up about work and who I was becoming that I was nearly suicidal. And the flash back and all the feelings and sadness and embarrassments hit me all at once. And I’m all, but I’m feeling really productive and it was all put on the back burner for work this weekend and it’s the same fucking date range as when this all happened last year.

So that was a bit scary. It doesn’t look like it, but I’ve made hella progress in just being happy, and being productive, and being more assertive with what I need to be happy. But I think about last year a lot. I can’t remember another time when it felt like I had everything I needed to feel good, but I just felt worthless. It was awful.

I don’t think I’m on the downward slope now – I’m sticking to things and I’m making progress – I just had a bad work day. I did take work home over the weekend. I did stay 2 hours later today than I should have. But that doesn’t mean I’m falling off the track again. But it did shake me up a little. It’s just difficult sometimes to not feel like I’m going to fall to pieces again. Maybe I haven’t been put back together long enough. And being in the anniversary of my breakdown makes me feel like I should be looking over my shoulder constantly for that wave.

I promised myself though, no de-railing. I had an extra long day at work today, and I felt justified in being a zombie in front of the TV when I got home. And I did. But just for a bit. But now I’m blogging. And I feel better.

So yeah. Take that, last year.

Thank you for indulging my wallowing. I’ll be chipper soon, ok?