When Your World is Flipped Upside Down....Walk on the Ceiling

Well it’s been a few months again since I wrote and a lot has been going on in that time. My weight has been bouncing around up and down along side my crazy schedule. In the last few months I have had some really great things happens – a vacation out to visit my parents, a cousin’s wedding, and starting a new job of sorts (well at least a new way to potentially make a little more money). I have also been dealing with some more negative things – emotions around dealing with death, work stress and the attempt at dating again. Both the good and the bad have pushed me and challenged me in ways I didn’t really think about. They have made it possible for me to learn a few lessons about myself.

First keeping really busy probably wasn’t the best thing I could have done for myself. I don’t think I’m unusual in the fact that instead of dealing with the grief of losing my best friend that I just created a world where I didn’t have to slow down. The busier I was the easier it was to sleep and to keep my brain from spinning out of control. Of course anyone else that has done the same thing knows that it actually doesn’t work and I learned this lesson the hard way. I found myself feeling like I was burning out and then I found the emotions I was trying to run from creeping back in at random moments making me more emotional that I normally am. It got the point where I was feeling horrible most of the time and I felt like everything was just overwhelming me. This of course was probably the biggest reason I ended up struggling with things like meal plans and exercising because I didn’t have the mental energy or desire to figure everything out. I knew that I had to stop this so I started to let myself actually feel whatever emotion presented itself in a given situation. If I felt like crying I would cry, if I felt like yelling I would yell, ect. I knew that putting on a happy face wasn’t going to actually help me deal with the emotions and to be able to move forward from it. I did discover that although there were a lot of emotional moments, they passed more quickly if I just let them happen. The biggest challenge that I am also working on is letting go of the guilt I feel for not getting to visit Will again and for not writing him as often as I used to. This is a bit more of challenge and the guilt still creeps back but I just remind myself that Will knew that I loved him. I always told him how much he meant to me and how much his friendship, guidance and love meat to me and that is the best anyone can ask for.

The second thing I have learned is that I’m stronger than I thought I was. There have been moments where I have doubted if I can keep going on now that I don’t have someone to go to for advice or to listen to me. Will always told me that I was strong and always knew how to make me feel better when everything was falling around me, but I always doubted if I would have gotten through some of the past stuff if he wasn’t around. In the last couple months though I have shown that I can keep moving forward and deal with a lot of the situations that I never thought I could. Two of the major things that I used Will’s help and guidance for in the past were family stress that always comes with their visits home or my visits out there, as well as the downsides of dating when things don’t go the way I want or expect them to go. It wasn’t easy and I’m not going to lie there have been moments where I really believed I couldn’t do it without Will but I did. I wrote in my journal a lot and worked through the issues and problems that came up. The cool thing was that in writing in my journal in some ways I was able to bring Will’s guidance back as I remembered things he had told me in the past. I know that there will be challenges in my future that will challenge me beyond what I think my limits are but at least I can know that at least one person has always thought I was capable of doing anything and that is something powerful to be able to hold on to and to be able to guide me through any challenge I may have to face, emotional or otherwise.

I’m slowly finding my way again. I didn’t realize how much I counted on Will to help keep me positive and to help remind me that I have a lot of good qualities. I do feel like my whole world has been flipped upside down but more and more I feel like I’m learning to walk on the ceiling  I’m excited to be making some money with scrapbooking. I’m feeling good about my new weight loss goals. I’m not so confident in the whole dating thing but I am still trying to be open to the idea that there may yet be someone out there who is a match for me. Life is too short to be lazy and not actually work toward my goals and if nothing else came out of losing my best friend it did cause me to really stop and look at my life and figure out what my priorities are and what they should be. It is time for me to live up to the faith Will always put in me and that is now what I strive to do. I have refocused on my weight loss goals as well as continuing to retrain myself to see the good qualities within myself even without someone to point them out to me.