The Slog Continues: Working on My Mental Health Health
- Willow Williams
- May 30, 2024
- 4 min read
Still slogging along. I am excited for the day where I sit down to write my next Beautiful Disaster Lit post and it'll be more upbeat than my recent posts. Hope that day is soon. I bet you all do, too. Mwahahahaha!
I've been thinking about improving my mental health like I am trying to lose weight. A lot of the same concepts apply. Let's look at a few of the commonalities.
First, it takes time. You will not lose 50 pounds in a week. And you will not get over a lifetime of trauma in a week, either. For me, it's been, checks calendar, a little over a month since the situationship went sideways on me. And a lot of what I am dealing with from the situationship situation is actually not about it at all. Rather, it's about a lifetime of things I haven't dealt with properly. I need to accept the fact this entire recovery process will take time, and more importantly, I can't rush it. It's going to take as long as it's going to take. Buckle up, Willow. You might be here a while.
Second, there are no quick fixes. If only just thinking about a salad made you lose weight! Wouldn't that be GREAT?! There are no shortcuts to mental health health, either. It's a slog, and then another slog, and then another slog you had never even knew existed. A surprise slog! I put my muck boots on every morning and shovel through as much shit as I can. Some days it's only ankle deep, and some days it's up over my head, and the only way out is through.
Third, have a plan. If you've tried to lose weight, you know you have to plan to get gym time or the like in. If you don't have a plan, it's almost guaranteed that weight loss won't happen. I do the same things (almost) every morning like clockwork to start my day off as well as I can. I get up, make tea, write in my journal, and work on a poem. This is my plan every morning. Do I accomplish this every day? Hell no, but having a plan is better than not having one.
George Washington didn't go into the Revoluntionary War with an 'I'll try to fight the Redcoats three times this week'. Oh no, he planned, and then he planned some more when and how he was going to take those fuckers out. You know why? Because the lives of his men and the freedom of a country depended on it. That's the attitude I want us all to have toward our mental health, kicking ass and taking names!, because our bodies and mental health are so goddamn precious, how could we not?
Fourth, ask for help. Confide in a friend or a counselor about what's going on and ask for their help. Think of it like your workout buddy, except that you're working out your mental health and not your body. Most people feel OK asking a friend to be a workout buddy, but not so much for a mental health buddy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking for mental health help. This is a conditioned stigma that needs to change, in my humble opinion. For more on asking for help, check out my post from May 16th https://www.beautifuldisasterlit.com/post/i-was-ctjmed-thankful-for-good-friends-with-hard-messages.
Finally, you will fail. Absolutely no one on the planet has a perfect weight loss/get in shape journey. And if they tell you they otherwise, they are fucking liar liars pants on fires! Monday and Tuesday of this week were rough for me. I did my normal routines/things that help me, my errands and chores, then I thought 'fuck all this', and I watched Scrubs for 6-7 hours for the rest of both days. I kept thinking I should do this or that, but I didn't. And yeah, I felt guilty and like I was a failure. But on Wednesday, I found a little empathy for myself, analyzed why I got that way and what to do about it, and got up and moved on. I try to use my failures as learning opportunities. I have learned a lot lately; the biggest lesson being going easy on myself and not expecting miracles of mental health health overnight. Class dismissed. Please!
All this to say, mental health health is a slog, and it seems like it will never get any better, but I am here to tell you it does. I didn't feel like I would ever get out of bed again a month ago, and now I at least can do laundry. That's progress, right? Damn straight it is. Progress is not being where you were yesterday, even if it's just in a small way.
Self empathy, folks, I cannot emphasize self empathy enough. I cradle my mental health like a newborn, because in a lot of ways, that's what it is. No one would expect Baby Willow to wake up tomorrow and be 100% grown up and ready for life. I need to learn to sit up, crawl, and walk before I can run circles around life again. Cradle your mental health like the precious baby it is, and teach it how to be healthy. And before you know it, you'll blink and it'll be graduation day, and you'll be in a much better space than you ever thought possible.
Comments