It’s been one of THOSE months, weeks, days! You know the ones I am talking about! The ones where you start off on a high note. You’re positive, you’re feeling yourself, you’re living in gratitude, and all happily living your best “live,laugh,love” life. Then *BOOM* the world comes crashing in on you and throwing the punches to remind you just how out of control you really are! Well, honestly it’s been that kind of MONTH at my house. A total whirlwind of emotional whiplash that has left me begging for July to come and melt away the stress. (It’s hot AF here in the summer, it’s the south y’all!) I would think I was making headway and being more positive and then something else would pile on top of me to make me feel like the universe was against me and I was never going to crawl out from under the pile of sh!t that I felt was actively being thrown at me. I was losing my sh!t and was ready to piss and moan until the universe decided to play fair and nice again. OH. Ok, so you got jokes? Hmm, well let’s see how the universe responds when I stop reacting, I decide to get my sh!t together, stay strong and stay positive despite its attempt to send me into whatever karmic catastrophe it had planned for me during next week’s episode of “THREEFOLD: my crazy chaotic catastrophe filled life”! Quit playing with me, you play too much! I ain’t got time for your bullish!t anymore, I am ready for the fight! If only I could stop allowing negativity to be the kryptonite that kills my super power of positive thinking!
I started the month off on a bad foot. I was arguing with the perky positivity peddler aka the man in my life. Work related issues carrying over into personal issues. Blah. Blah. Blah. I had recently found out that #2 of my threefold was resorting to self-harm behaviors to cope with “having too many feelings” or “not being able to feel anything” again. (This has been an ongoing battle for 8 months) This up and down continued for a week trying to decide what to do and the constant worry of if she was going to be okay. My co-house manager Mr. Positivity Personified aka the man in my life, had to leave town for work AGAIN amongst all of the chaos. I hate being a b!tch about him working out of town, but it always seems to happen at some of the worst times. I guess it’s the universe testing my mental stability and making sure I’m still as strong as I claim to be. The universe has a way with making sure I remember I can always handle things alone if I have to, even when I don’t want to. As I rolled into week 2, it was like a bomb went off in our lives and I was scurrying around trying to pick up the pieces from the aftermath and put things back together again. After some deliberation and consulting with our mental health team we decided I was to admit my daughter to an inpatient psychiatric facility for self-harm and suicidal ideation. Every mother’s fear. My failures, my guilt, my anger, my own trauma, my anxiety, my world came flying at me full speed and didn’t stop it’s brutal assault on my way of life for weeks. Soon I was consumed with dealing with all of the ins and outs of having a kid in the hospital, getting kids back and forth to school, finding out 2/3 kids are probably going to need summer school, the ceiling falling in, doctors, therapists, assessments, trauma evaluations, family sessions, dealing with the Exhole day after day, CPS and abuse allegations (against the father), no contact orders and court preparation, insurance coverage and coordination of benefits, #3 trying to adjust to a new schedule and less time with her dad, coordinating partial hospitalization aftercare, losing a friend I thought would always be here for me, cutting hours at work, not sleeping, not eating, my dryer going out, #1 of my threefold getting sick and needing a bunch of tests and follow up care (pending final diagnosis *fingers crossed*), sweeping bedrooms, cleaning house and generally just losing my sh!t from the stress and emotional, mental and physical exhaustion. I couldn’t focus on anything. It has been one of the hardest months I’ve had in a really long time, and believe me I’ve had some hard months. I was literally running on caffeine, chaos, cuss words, and courage.
As I was witnessing everything seemingly falling apart I started seeing how moody, irritable, closed off, anxious and down right exhausted I was becoming. I was constantly between a laugh and a cry. I was holding on to my last bit of strength and after picking another fight with the person I want to share the rest of my life with I began to hear what he was saying to me. He wasn’t pissy and fighting back. He wasn’t calling me a b!tch or telling me I was making everyone miserable (even if I was being a b!tch and most likely making everyone miserable) He was worried, but his worry was surrounding me. Of course he was worried about the kids as well but he saw me struggling and he saw that it was a self-inflicted struggle. He saw the tired, worn down, running on empty, half beaten, half hopeless person I was and my desperate need to cling on to the last bit of strength buried in my bones and keep fighting for what I felt was survival. What good is life if we are just surviving? He looked me in the eye and with all the love, concern, and frustration he could convey he said “You. ARE. Exhausted! You can’t control any of this! You are KILLING yourself with worry! What GOOD is it doing to worry about everything when you cant change ANY of it?” I will now say the three words every man loves to hear, but so rarely does. In black and white for the world to see. He IS RIGHT. I was mad. How was my anger, anxiety, pain, fear, and constant worry serving anyone in my home most of all how was it serving me? As I sat there and resigned myself to the fact that I was not in control of anything that was happening. I couldn’t change the past and I certainly can’t predict the future. I realized I wanted to control everything. The more I fought to hold onto that control the more of it I was losing. I wasn’t focusing on the now, what I could do in that moment or how I should be displaying a positive attitude and being who my threefold needed me to be. I needed an attitude adjustment, a change of perspective, a vacation (hopefully eventually), and some damn sleep! I finished that thought and went to bed to submit to the sleep that I desperately needed.
I woke up after 6 hours of sleep straight through and felt more like myself and less like the basket case I had been the past few days. When you are consistently sleeping only 2-4 hours per night for nearly 3 weeks straight you don’t realize how much havoc it is wreaking on your body and on your mood. 6 hours is magical at that point. I did my positive affirmations (because live,laugh,love) the next morning, listened to my “Living Fearless” videos, and tried to remind myself that I couldn’t control any of it. The universe tried to continue bullying me, kicking my ass and taking my lunch money. I had anxiety creeping in when #2 admitted after 10 days home after 7 days inpatient and now going to a new partial hospitalization program during the day, that she was struggling with feelings of wanting to self harm and was worried she would “hurt herself or worse.” In that moment I had to remember to breathe. In 2 seconds I decided I need to be positive, for me and for her. I had to think about how to spin this and make it a positive. Where was my hidden superpower? I remembered that not long ago she wouldn’t admit this, she wouldn’t call me, she didn’t want to “bother or burden me” or anyone else with her feelings and problems. This was a positive step. I spoke to the nurse when I checked her in. I remembered she was going to a program where she would be safe and supervised, that my worry wasn’t useful, because she was safe. I went to work and distracted myself, in between phone calls with the treatment center as they were assessing 2. As I felt the tension I would repeat to myself “she is safe” “I am safe” “my worry isn’t serving me or her” “I am getting her the help she needs.” “This is not in my control” “I am a good mom”. As the day went on and I stopped to breathe when getting anxious and I forcibly made myself let go of the building tension in the muscles of my neck and back I noticed I was more conscious of my own self talk and self sabotage. I had been repeatedly doing to myself the exact thing I tell my kids not to do. My thoughts were beyond negative, they were abusive and blatantly catastrophic. These thoughts started becoming words as I spoke life into them and gave them room to intrude on my attitude towards everything and everyone. It was time for me to counteract those thoughts and words by spinning them into positives. Regardless of almost any situation you can spin a thought or a reaction to a positive. It’s about perspective and the willingness to not give in to the first instinct. Like anything else in life being more positive is a habit and is a choice. You make a decision in less than 2 seconds after having a thought as to your reaction. You can choose negativity or you can choose positivity. Allowing yourself to choose negativity will breed more negativity. The opposite is just as true, thinking positively with lead to more positive thinking. Both will have an effect on our attitude and our emotions. It’s harder to pull yourself out of that negative mind set once you allow yourself to go there. I know I have days where I set up shop and start selling it by the bushel load to the people around me. When deciding to be positive it is a proactive approach versus the reactive approach of being negative. Positivity allows us to take our power back. Choose positivity. It is something I have to strive for daily. I know that breaking patterns of behavior is difficult. I also know if I want different results that means taking different actions. I have to break the cycle of toxic negativity in my head and start countering my initial reactions with light and positivity. I can’t control what is happening around me, but with time and effort I can control my attitude and reaction to it. It takes less than 2 seconds. 2 seconds can make the day or break it. 2 seconds when the decision is all mine. 2 seconds doesn’t seem to be that much time but in those 2 seconds we decide if we are going to be positive or negative. Those 2 seconds can build into the next and then the next. Do I choose to use the hidden super power with in me, or do I choose to destroy my light with the kryptonite of negativity? I want to build a foundation of happiness and I believe that it all starts with what I do in those 2 seconds. It all starts with me.
