Where Is The Love?

I’m not sleeping at night. I’m not eating in the morning. I’m not working out during the day.
Ya’ll, I’m not okay.

These days are spent juggling the ridiculous amount of personal and business projects I have going on. These days are spent checking on other people to see how they are managing. These days are spent running from my feelings.

The chest pain is back. The shortness of breath is constant. The headaches never leave. The anxiety is real.

When we reset with the Rona, all the emotions that enveloped me when it started, came back as a second, second wave. Except this time is different. After five months of being separated from my family, four months of being separated from Target, and an unspecified amount of months left being separated from my friends… I’ve lost the words of hope telling me, it’ll be okay.
Which is bad enough.
But when I lost that voice, I also lost my ability to speak with aspiration to others.
And that, for me, has been the worst.
To be me, and not be able to touch, encourage, and support people, genuinely, feels like I have lost myself.
This is why self-love is so important. This is why self-love shouldn’t be defined by any outward influence. This is why self-love can’t be sustained if you’re not entirely invested in it.

It is not that I don’t love myself at all, I just don’t love myself completely. The most natural way I express affection is through interaction and service. Loving on other people, and knowing they feel my love, is so rooted into how I define myself, it has become a way I define my worth. It has become how I love myself.
As I tell my close friends,

“Girl, I am losing my mind.”

“Yeah, I am doing too much.”

“Honestly, I’m having a hard time, so I am doing extra things to try to balance.”

I am also asking, and demanding they tell me how I can do something for them to ease my pain of being away from them.

“What can I cook you so that I know you’re eating?”

“I’m going to drop this off just in case you need it.”

and “Tell me everything that you are feeling, so I can support you.”

Let me do for you. Let me give you. Let me help you.
Because I cannot help myself.
I’ll take this course, so I can prove I am still useful. I’ll tell my husband every detail of what I do, so he will see how valuable I am. I’ll make make every meal from scratch so my children remember how hard their Momma tried to make the quarantine special. If I just do enough, maybe I will be okay. If I can look back at my day and see all I have accomplished, maybe I can rest. If I bring someone else joy, maybe I will be less miserable.

I’m sharing this for specific reasons. For one, I needed to verify this is what is going on inside me. Writing, as therapy has always revealed things that I try to sugarcoat in my mind. Seeing my words validates that this struggle has been difficult not because I’m ungrateful or dramatic, but because I am trying so hard, too hard to be unaffected and strong.

Secondly, I share a lot of what I do on social media. However, even when I preface or end things with, “y’all, I’m doing the most, this isn’t healthy,” there are always people who skip right over that declaration and only see the results, productivity, and accomplishments. Let me be clear, running myself into the ground because of deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy is not a mood, the mood, or any mood, anyone should aspire replicate. More stress isn’t how to deal with emotional stress, it’s how to avoid it.

Lastly, if anyone else is having a hard time, like I have said from day one of the Ronapocalypse, it is okay to not be okay. After everything that has transpired since, honestly, I don’t know how many of us have made it this far. Nothing about what has happened or is continuing to happen feels like anything we were prepared to live through. I don’t think we credit enough the amount of stress the unknown can bring. Then, we suffer because we are worried about being the only one who feels like they are suffocating.
You’re not alone. Well, you may technically be, cause… Rona, but emotionally, I feel you.

I’ve spent years transitioning into a healthy motherhood, adjusting to my own inflated expectations as a stay-at-home Mom, defining my importance outside what I do for my family, and being ready to seek enjoyment not associated with labor. After all that evaluation, the physical space I planned to assist with my continued growth and evolution has been cancelled and I have resorted to my unhealthy ways because I’ve mastered no other tools to cope.

I wish I wasn’t in this place, but I am, and that’s where I have to start from.
Where are you starting?