I am so very tired at the moment. So incredibly tired. It sort of feels as though my energy has decided to take a sudden leave of absence without asking my permission…. I’ve been busy, yes, but these last couple of weeks I have significantly reduced my workload, and yet still I cannot get through the day without yawning several times, needing a nap, having some kind of emotional breakdown, or struggling to wake up in the morning.
This feeling, no doubt, is familiar to many of you. In fact I am fairly sure that most of you who are reading this are probably doing a lot more than I am at the moment, and feeling this way. But it can be so incredibly frustrating to feel as though you cannot accomplish all the things you want to do, the things you should do, or even the things you need to do.
I feel this so deeply at the moment. As I wake up in the morning realising I don’t actually have to get up and study, or when I called in sick to work the other day because I was mentally distressed and could not face going to work for eight hours, the thought I am a failure slips into my mind, and thus begins the landslide of self-doubt, criticism and anxiety. And when the feelings of guilt come, I think to myself I deserve this because, I think, I should be guilty for not doing much and for pulling out of things. These are the exact feelings and thought patterns which my eating disorder thrives off, and which constantly troubled me a few years ago when I was stuck in my anorexia. You are a failure. You deserve this.
It kind of feels like my mental health problems are out to get me and prevent me from completing my bachelor degree. And it feels like they’ll stop at nothing to do so. Recently I made the difficult decision to defer my studies for a year, and instead use 2020 to rest, recover, and seek out God’s plans for me and ask for his wisdom and guidance for my future. I explain it all so nicely, and yes, in many ways I am excited to see where this year will take me and am looking forward to a break from study, but making that decision also felt like a big fat F for Fail. And it also seemed like another chance my eating disorder/mental health problems had taken to throw me off course again.
The start of February was hard. I was already tired from everything I had been doing over the summer, but took a week before uni started to rest, enjoy time with my family, and be out in God’s wonderful creation. And yet the day I started back in classes, my mental health took a turn for the worse. There were already signs I had seen coming; plans were developing in my mind of how to restrict, my eating behaviours were becoming more sporadic and less healthy and I had a lot of obsessive thoughts regarding my body and my self-worth. And when the semester started, these things only got worse. I should say here, though, that my health was not anyway near as bad as it has been. In fact, I was still able to enjoy several mornings, afternoons, or evenings of being carefree and feeling like the “normal me”. However I identified the patterns that were developing in my thought processes and my general attitude towards work, study and life, and saw they were the beginning of a possible downwards spiral into restrictive eating, self harm, and withdrawal; if I did not catch it soon.
And thus the conversation of taking a break from uni began. I won’t go into all the details, but basically, through a consultation with my psychologist, prayer, and conversations with friends and family I trust and respect, I made the difficult but also exciting decision to defer my nursing studies for a year. Since that decision has been made, I haven’t done a whole lot, but am trying to let myself rest and recover. Do I feel better? Yes and no. Yes, because there was such a great sense of relief at not having to have the constant anxiety that is often with me through the semester, and because I felt a mental load lift when I knew I did not have to go to uni this year. No, because I am still exhausted. And I’ve still had days where I have felt pretty awful. It’s not been an instant fix, like I naively thought it might be.
So why am I telling you all this? Well, a part of it is to just explain. To explain that life is messy. That it’s not straightforward, and the perfect, successful and easy pathway that society dictates to us – a constant upward trajectory of satisfaction, happiness and success – is simply not true. I know this too well. So many of my seemingly well thought-out plans get thrown out the window when my eating disorder decides to show up, or life gets messy for any another reason. And you’ll know this in your own life as well. Mental health is not the only thing that gets in the way. It’s just life in a broken world. But it doesn’t make us failures. It just shows that the perfect life the world tells us about is, in fact, a lie. It’s unachievable. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive, but it gives us the freedom to realise that when something doesn’t go as we planned, when we make a mistake or we do not acheive as much as we had hoped, we are not failures.
I also shared this as a way of saying it’s ok. It’s ok to pause. It’s ok to feel tired. It’s ok to need a break. There is a balance, of course, between taking a break to allow yourself to recover, and actually doing too little and becoming idle. But I trust you will be given enough wisdom from your own intuition, the work of the Holy Spirit, and those around you, to discern that difference. But don’t look at other people’s lives to make the judgement for yourself (well, other than Jesus’ life; his is a pretty damn perfect example if you are wanting a balanced and fulfilling life). I look at my friends who are studying and working full time and then I’m just over here going “ahh two shifts of work plus a social even this week, haaalllp!” And yep, it can definitely feel a bit like well my life is looking pretty easy. I must either be extremely lazy or an extreme failure. But you know what? I’m still getting through life. I’m still trusting God every day. I’m still surviving, and I’m learning from it. I’m still figuring out my life through everything I’m doing, and not doing, just as much as my friends who can fit 100 more things into their day.
Of course this is also different for everyone, and even for ourselves at different points in our lives. I’ve had times when my mental burdens have been heavier than they are now, and I’ve still managed to get through weeks at both uni and work. And I know there are other people who have suffered so much more than I have who are shining examples of how to keep on hoping, keep on persevering, and showing your mental illness who’s boss. But for this time, I’m choosing to listen to what my body is telling me, and the fact it’s asking for twelve hours of sleep every night and no fully-packed out days is a pretty good indication that it might be wise to take a break.
If you are fighting an eating disorder, another mental illness, or any form of grief or suffering, you need to give yourself the time to focus on the issue and work on healing. It can be so hard to actually realise you need this, but if you are getting to the point where every single day is a struggle, where you have almost no joy left in your life, or where you feel like sleeping all the time, look, listen and feel those signs and just stop. It doesn’t mean you have to stop everything. Maybe it’s just one activity you could drop from your week to use that time to instead focus on recovery and healing. But don’t first cut out your gym session, or your walk in the park of a morning, or your date night. The things that are helping us keep it together are often the first things to go. As I said; those things are holding us together, so if you think you should be cutting out your leisure activities, remember you need time to pursue activities you enjoy; it is good for your body and soul. But also, don’t think this means I’m asking you to stop helping others, to not spend time with people, or to completely focus on yourself. Not at all. I know I struggled with this for a long time; I thought I was being selfish by taking so much time away from things to heal and to rest. But now I’m actually in the position where I know how much I can and can’t handle. And at the moment it means I’m cutting a couple of hours from work each week, but continuing to lead a Bible study group. Obviously there are financial strains, and this is not a possibility for everyone. But in a world where we are obsessed with work and constantly doing, consider the few things you can drop from your life to give you more time in the day to rest. I guarantee that instead of becoming more selfish and inward focused, this will actually give you more energy to focus on others and be more intentional during the interactions you do have.
I am tired. Mentally and physically. I’m not sure about you, but I need a break. I need a break from the speed of this world. It’s exhausting just watching it rush past. Don’t get to the point where the strength you need in order to get through each day comes from the coffee you drink in the morning, the several beers you have at night, the marks you make on your body in moments of despair, the relationships you end up abusing, or the feelings of success you have from getting through another day without food. Realise when you can keep going, but realise when you need to stop. I’ve come to accept it is not always my eating disorder that is actually preventing me from doing all these wonderful things with my life. It is a truly horrible illness that has caused me a lot of grief and I’ve had a lot of setbacks due to it, but also, these times where I have to stop and actually focus on the problem, although painful, have given me so much more insight and offered me the ability to face each new challenge with a greater understanding of myself, my strengths and my limitations.
I heard this great quote once that said “if you’re too busy to spend time with God; you’re too busy.” This has become the measurement for my life. If something is going to rob me of the time I spend with God, and I can’t get away with cutting another thing out, or having an hour’s less sleep, then it can’t be in my life. This might seem extreme to you, but when it is my faith that keeps me alive, this is incredibly important. You know what sustains you. And if you have to cut that very thing out, then you are too busy. I want to live a life where my first answer to the question “how are you?” is not always “busy.” I hope you do too.
The Life She Found 