Standing in the Storm of a Bad Day

I don’t have many bad days.

I do have plenty of crappy moments, but I do my best not to let them run away with me. I deliberately choose to do the things that will help me get through the sticking points and move on into something better or at least LESS worrisome.

Sometimes this choosing bit involves wine. Sometimes it involves wine with my girlfriends. Or, frantic, can-you-believe-he-said-that? texts, or watching a kick-ass Good Wife, or petting my cat, or meditating, or Barry Manilow belting out “I made it through the rain….” Not kidding. Don’t judge.

This choosing to move from bad to better almost NEVER involves working out, but I do recommend it. To other people. I totally think everybody should be working out And, I will say, the one time I was having a super, super bad day and I DID work out, it did help. It could have been because I also got to leave my daughter, who was making a significant contribution to my bad day, in the Kids Club for an hour, or maybe not, but the exercise did leave me feeling stronger and nearly sane.

The point is when I feel a cascade of tiny troubles becoming a storm drain of muddy sludge, I DO SOMETHING. I do something different to avoid letting a rotten moment, or many rotten moments, turn into a full-fledged rotten day.

But Sunday? I was in a MOOD. And I let it all come out.

Little Upsets

I felt unappreciated AND exhausted. AND THEN, I went grocery shopping, before eating breakfast and took the bakery section personally. All those maple bars were taunting me. I returned home like a hungry wildebeest. And the house was inside-out messy and during my attempt to threaten the people who live here to clean it up, I was accused of being sarcastic. Seriously, people. Is that the best you’ve got?

AND then,  I took a few minutes to go into the office and breathe in some sanity only to realize a deadline I thought was two weeks out, was two days out and HOW did I miss that?

The cat threw up. My arthritic left hip (the right is my favorite) was on fire and  every time I seemed to gain some emotional footing and stop being grouchy and shrieky — the area around my heart crumbled away a little again and something would set me off.

When Nothing is Working Right

Nothing was working right. Me included.

So, I decided to let it go. Go with the energy and emotion as politely as I could. Follow the bad feelings around and get to know them, see where they were coming from. I mean I could FEEL all that without behaving badly. I could stand in the discomfort and anxiety without moving my furniture in.

I could just show up, be a part of whatever came and end the struggle of trying to feel better or fix it or even push through. I could be in it and accountable with it and patient with myself.

Whew. It is so much easier to say “Hi there hurt, or fear, or anxiety, I see you sitting there. Can I get you a glass of wine?” than pretend like I couldn’t see the dark shadow next to me on the couch, reaching for my chips.

A funny thing happened when I did this and accepted the difficulties of the day. When I just acknowledged I was hurting and tired —  things got easier. NOT at first. And I didn’t immediately become all blissed-out or anything enlightened like that.

But the in between parts, those bad-day moments, which were all little, niggly things (aren’t they always) that were giving me fits, just went away. I stopped noticing the little upsets. My shoulders dropped back down. My neck loosened. And when my husband made a joke, I didn’t laugh, but I thought about it.

Standing in the Storm

When I observed my experience and all that low energy circling around, it became okay. It didn’t feel like I had to fight against it. I  wouldn’t be lost to it. I could stand in the storm and watch it without blowing away.

The drama eased, because curious cannot co-exist with despair. Curiousity takes all my attention. If I’m curious about what is triggering me to upset, or curious about how the sadness and hurt feels in my body, or curious about what I am feeling, than that alone changes the nature of the bad.

And that, is how I went through bad-day Sunday, by first wallowing and fussing and blaming and then by becoming aware that it was all okay even if I wasn’t sure I was. I got curious about all that and the bad feelings morphed into something more interesting.

It wasn’t a quick fix, but I’m not going for a fix. I’m going for experience and growth and awareness and exploration and it was ALL that. By the end of all the messiness, I felt exhausted, sure, but hopeful and a little more gentle with myself.

This human being gig is demanding. Some days are tough. But, even then it’s okay, because if we are lucky, we get to start again.