Taking Centre Stage

Just a quick update from the Secret (oh that’s a joke) Life of Worm Hill.

I’ve been absolutely exhausted this week. So I took a week off, after an email with my sister made me realise just how utterly useless I am at taking time for myself to look after myself and just generally chill.

I stopped. I went to work and I went to uni, because those are things that are pretty useful to keep on doing. But, No Yoga, No Gym, No Squash, No Climbing. Lots of climbing into bed when I felt like it when I got home. Lots of sleeping on the way to and from work (we car share, it’s great – I get to snooze. Which is pretty perfect for me because I AM NOT A MORNING PERSON.)

Gradually I started to feel the bone, aching weariness lift and sure enough, the same pressures I feel when I’m full of energy returned full force. Mostly I can’t say no, or feel comfortable taking time for myself.

I do. Eventually. Then I convince myself that the other person has a huge problem with this and then I feel all martyred and then I feel angry and about two weeks down the line, I figure out that hey! this was all my crap anyway.

So this week I gave myself permission to do this guilt free and, being aware of my tendencies to project my rubbish onto others, when I felt a little paranoid I simply checked in to see if this was gut feelings or simply a pattern being a pattern. Things were going well.

Then last night I was full of a bloated tummy, feeling as if I was going to morph into a hippo since I hadn’t done any exercise all week and generally grouchy. So I decided to do a meditation/ journal thingy before bed to see what was coming up.

So I started off… feeling fat… blah blah yadda yadda… scared… body letting me down… then out of the blue…. I’m fed up of always feeling second best around so and so, I’m sick of feeling as if I always have to compete to justify my feelings or interpretations of the world. Blah blah. But I was a smart enough cookie to realise that I was onto something so that’s when I decided to meditate.

In I went, right down into the bloatyness and discomfort, expecting to find a child wanting to be creative, or money issues, or support issues or whatever.

I found a strong and courageous woman, filled with wisdom. It was me. You know what I said to myself?

NO MORE WAITING IN THE WINGS.

Wow. I mean… Wow. (Considering I’ve recently been labelled the drama queen amongst friends this made me chuckle a bit.)

But that’s it – Inside I wanted to step forward into my own life and start playing the lead. Making the choices about what I want to do, and if others really do have a problem with this, maybe letting them know that that’s their problem and not mine.

I also expressed my concerns over feeling exhausted and not doing any exercise and I discovered that all I really wanted to do was go for a ride. Something I’ve been avoiding since about October last year.

So today, I went for a ride. Not a long one, and mostly a road ride.

I came home and felt more relaxed and elated than I have in a long time.

Then I got into my pyjamas, told my friends that no I wasn’t going out to the movies tonight, I was curling up in bed with the telly. To relax. Because that’s what my body wanted to do.

And the anxiety slipped away.