I had the best of intentions for my four day weekend. Especially for today, which had a lot of time allotted for school.
But you see...yesterday I had a therapy appointment. This is not rare, I have them weekly, sometimes more than weekly, but this was a little different. In yesterday's session, which is likely my last one until my therapist comes back from maternity leave, some pretty big lightbulbs went off - for instance, WHY I have so much trouble with habits and routines, why I default to survival mode instead of bridging the gap into being successful and flourishing, and a couple of other things I am not going to talk about in this blog, due to its public nature.
So you would think that today I would have been more motivated to stay on track, stick to my written schedule, and push myself (gently) closer to successful instead of just surviving. You would think that, but you would be wrong.
Instead, I overslept by three hours, I skipped both blocks of school, I'm writing this when I should be working out, and I have a sink full of dishes I should be attending to, but I'm not. My optimistic explanation is that I'm taking a mental health day, that I simply just needed to take the day to process, that tomorrow I will do better, that tomorrow I will be better.
I re-worked tomorrow's schedule, to give myself some school time to make up for the time I am losing today, but that's all dependent on one thing - waking up on time.
Now I haven't talked about my sleep issues much on this blog. Most of you do know that I struggle with waking up on time. I got some enlightenment on that yesterday as well.
What a lot of you don't know is that this time last year I was on sleep medication, I was wearing ear plugs every night, I was in the midst of extensive neurological testing, and I was plagued as I have always been with nightmares.
Long before my therapist led me to the kind of breakthroughs I had yesterday she worked on my sleep. That's actually her specialty. (We joke that she has super powers over sleep, but I am actually pretty convinced she does.) By the time I came to her I was actually on two different types of sleep meds, and I was messed up. At that time I didn't get up on time because I physically couldn't. There was too much fog and too many chemicals to fight off. Too much anxiety and fear, too much doubt and uncertainty, and too little confidence.
So now I have the physical ability to fall asleep on my own, and to get up when the alarm goes off. What stops me from waking up on time now is purely psychological, and the revelations I had yesterday should be enough for me to talk myself through the mornings, into getting up instead of giving up in ten minute increments at a time.
It's especially hard considering that the coping method I was taught growing up is to "take a nap" when I am stressed or overwhelmed. That's the exact opposite of what I need to be doing right now, but 32 years of a habit, of a "default", is awfully hard to change.
I am hoping, by writing this down, by getting it out of my brain and into the written word, tomorrow I'll be a little less overwhelmed, and can find the strength and self love it will take me to get up with that first alarm and tackle the day like an adult who has their shit together.
Because, in the end - my day only works when I get up on time.
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