Hello Self Care, Bye Self Destruction

After a year of sulking, denial, despair, depression and a copious amount of wine and seltzer’s I am bull dozing full force into 2021 with a conscious and focused effort on my mental wellness. I am going to manifest positivity, stability, independence and consistency. How will I accomplish this, you ask? I couldn’t seem to find it at the bottom of a bottle or in my many attempts at a flailing relationship in 2020. So I’m going to dig deep into myself, expose all the wounds, worries and insecurities and examine them, tend to them and allow them to heal. The new me, not a different me, but a stronger and unbroken me, is going to practice self-care, follow my passion and for a dash of healthy, practice moderation in all things I enjoy. I am going to be 35 this year and throughout my life I thought I had experienced the worst of the hard knocks and heart aches and chocked each up to a life lesson that I have learned from. But it’s so easy to get lost in the moment and let negativity and toxicity envelope you, you forget that you can’t control what happens to you in life but you can control how you react to every situation. And that’s life, a domino effect of situations and events. And let me tell you, 2020 is what kicked me right in the ass to realize that. I had self-destructed completely. A 5 year relationship ended with a boom, I up rooted my kids over night to my sister’s house and instantly lost my independence. I had no car, no job, and I blamed everyone else for it. There was nothing but broken pieces that surrounded me and I lived in it, breathed it and eventually became it. I detached myself emotionally from the people who loved me and who were there for me and became obsessed with what I had lost. Until something changed in me. It was New Year’s Eve, just minutes away from 2021, the clock was ticking towards midnight. I was sitting with my younger sister in the backyard, looking up into the sky, I was wrapped in a blanket and crying, and she looked at me and said, “I’m not trying to be mean, but when are you going to stop being like this?, I miss the happy you”. And her words resonated right through me. I had that ah ha moment. I was so stuck on what I had lost, , the loss of my routine and what I thought I needed to feel alive, wasn’t that at all, I was holding on to an intangible past. Then I started writing that night. Writing anything and everything on my mind, my thoughts, poems, stories, what I would say to him. It was a release. Writing has always been my passion. And I had stopped because I had lost myself in my self-assembled trench of darkness and exchanged the therapeutic effects of writing for a real bad wine head ache in the mornings. I feel free and light when I put pen to paper, and through writing, I felt a weight lifting little by little, day by day. I started practicing acts of self-care. Started listening to positive thinking pod casts, even downloaded one of those inspirational quote apps, there’s an app for everything. I have started therapy, opened up about my feelings to my sister and mom and I stopped hiding under all the debris of what ifs and if I would haves... Not to forget, I cut back on drinking, comfort sweets and binge watching Netflix, everything in moderation they say. A glass of red wine is good for the heart but a bottle everyday will probably give you cirrhosis of the liver and it cuts out the problem of drunk texts to your ex. That’s like a double resolution. I learned through therapy that the trauma of a break up or anything that changes your life dramatically, can flood your mind with only the good memories, it’s your brain trying to protect you, but it equates to loss and grief causing sadness, anxiety and depression. And that’s ok and its normal, but only you have the power to defeat it and purge it. Process it, cry, write, shop, take a boxing class and let it go. There is a reason I left that relationship and a reason why I was able to endure the emotional roller coaster and moments of madness and questionable decisions that brought me to this point in my life. Once I could grasp that concept, it helped to clear the fog that kept me in such a dark place and allowed me to see clearly. I was free to embark on a new journey the one I have always searched for. It was right in front of me now, a new life to build from scratch, however I want, I am the curator. My goal for 2021 is to practice self-care through my passions, writing and spending quality time with my kids and doing what I enjoy, keeping a positive mind set, and living in the moment, otherwise I’m cheating myself and my kids out of the most important memories of life, which is found in every second. So say a positive mantra in the morning, go get your hair and nails did, go out with the girls, don’t get too drunk, remember moderation, do something that challenges you and make no apologies for being you, we are all human and were made to make mistakes, we were crafted to be perfectly imperfect