A Little Background

So, this is my first blog post as the pondering elf...I'm not really sure where to start. I'm using this just as an outlet, a place to vent and to get thoughts that are whirring around inside my head out. 

This isn't a self indulgent moaning or whining thing. I think that writing things out will maybe make them easier to deal with. So I guess, here it all is. Inside my messy little brain.

I've had a bit of a weird time lately. I've had pretty bad anxiety for most of my life and I thought I had managed to put the majority of that behind me. That turned out to be quite wrong.

For the past few weeks or so, I've been having random episodes of sad. Not for any reason - nothing particularly sad or distressing has happened to me. But the tears come. The need to cry overwhelms me then this wash of panic follows. It keeps me up at night. It wakes me in the morning, and then it looms over me like a cloud during the day. It lurks around the corner. It makes me lash out at people and push them away. 

Basically I'm writing all of this out so it hopefully lets me deal with the random sad a little easier. I think the turning point came yesterday morning. I woke up feeling unhappy, soldiered on and went to work. For the first hour and a half of my shift I was alone (which usually, I quite enjoy actually). Within ten minutes I was crying into the daily sales rally, hands shaking as I debated whether I was too old and pathetic to phone my mum. I went out onto the shop floor, still crying and feeling completely irrational (because again, this just crept on me, on the sly, for no reason). I had work to do, and I intended to push myself and do it.

Sometimes things just don't work out that way. I knew my close friend was working the same shift as me in another one of our branches. With a lot of trepidation I ended up giving him a call, having no idea what else to do.

It must have been a pretty sorry (and probably amusing) sight to witness. Small blonde girl pressed against a wall holding a hook full of glittery gift bags in one hand and crushing the phone with the other. I felt so torn between 'have a cry and hide' and 'just suck it up and keep moving!' And the guilt for calling up my colleague at eight twenty in the morning wasn't a great feeling either.

The point is, I can reflect on it now, but at the time it felt crushing and scary. Every day prior to that had been building to that moment. All the random outbursts, all the little tears. I just want to move forward. And I'm hoping, writing this will help move that forward.

x