The Slide

I started sliding yesterday and I cannot seem to pull myself back up. Yesterday I was feeling like I was letting someone down. I was feeling cornered into helping them in ways that I am not comfortable and when I could not follow through, I felt badly. I do not like to let people down, but it happens. I was pushed to a limit I had set for myself and my limit was not respected, yet I still tried to comply. When I expressed my frustration to my family they stood there with their mouths open saying things like, “Why are you doing that?”  “You have done enough, now stop” and much more, but I still felt the guilt pulling at me, telling me I had not tried hard enough and telling me I was not good enough.

This morning I had my feelings hurt because I was told my writing would be used for something and I discovered it was not. I don’t expect everyone to use my writing when they say they will, but somehow since I was on the slide heading down to the pit of low self worth, this little thing hurt. I wish I had known and not found out the hard way (opening to the page and seeing someone else’s writing there.) but that is just how it goes sometimes. Honestly, the writer was wonderful and I enjoyed what they wrote, but it only made me doubt myself more and down I slid again.

Once you get going on the self doubting, guilty, hurt, slide you are destined to continue sliding. Further and further you fall until looking up all you see is the negative and there is no positive to be found. The longer you linger here the more you begin to believe everything your mind is telling you. All the mean things you tell yourself trump the truth and you sit awkwardly at the bottom of the slide wondering how you will ever climb back up and get back to whom and what you once were.

 I know now that I gave away too much trying to keep someone else happy while I let myself down. I know my limits and I extended them when I should not have. I also know that things do not always happen as we expect them to and the best course is to just pick up and move on. My mind is jockeying back and forth between the truth and the lies and I have to keep grasping at the truth to pull myself back up. I guess when you think about it I am pretty lucky that my family was there reminding me to respect myself and my own limits. They also reminded me that it is okay to say no, even when it makes things harder for someone else. Today, I begin the climb back, one step at a time and you know what? I am not going to climb up the slide…I am going to walk around to the ladder and make the journey back up a little easier.