So then I took the step. My whole body was shaking so much that keeping upright and balanced was near impossible. Tears of worry and doubt were blinding me and the overwhelming feeling of fear made any forward progress unthinkable. I began to realise that this was just all too difficult. I tried so hard to proceed but I misjudged the step and lost my balance. I could have tried to regain my balance but all those feelings of despair were just too much, so for the first time in my life, I gave up. I gave up and fell.
Initially I fell into a fog. The fog was familiar, like a recurring dream. It was the same fog I had been walking in all this time. Even though I had my eyes wide open, and on the outside my purpose looked clear to others, the fog was mine and mine alone. My fog only allowed me to see a couple of feet either side of me and that, at the time, felt adequate. I had the children close, so I didn't have to look beyond the fog or plan or take into consideration anything beyond it. However, there were whispers calling me in the mist; words of advice and help, even comfort. They echoed the self same thoughts in my head, they were exactly the same thoughts that I had been ignoring all this time. And I had ignored them as there was safety in the fog. I was in a comfort zone and I didn't need anything else. I didn't need to leave the fog and I didn't need to wake up from the dream. The words I could hear were clear but the message confusing, or made confusing by my own reticence and apprehension. Who actually are you? Where do you want to go? Do you need help? You can't do this alone.
Then I continued to fall. I fell out of the fog and and into a dream. In that dream I lay on my bed. Unable to move, my body was having an argument with my mind. I had managed, only an hour beforehand and seemingly against all odds, to get the children ready and get them to school. I was now back home and went straight to bed, utterly exhausted by the physical and mental effort that it took to do the morning routine, a routine that had become second nature to me for the last year and a half. Two weeks previous I had been diagnosed by my GP as having anxiety and depression. "You are exhausted", he told me. The voices from the fog came back to haunt me. The voices that had offered help and comfort. The voices that I had ignored. I didn't give me any time and now here I am, with nothing left to give. Empty, hollow and at the lowest point, I was prescribed citalopram to help with the feelings of anxiety and depression and referred to therapy. I lay there on bed, my thoughts jumbled and irritating, confused and sad, conflicting and frustrated. The drugs heightened the feelings of despair and uselessness. This is what they do before they start to work the doctor and the internet informed me, as did others who had been on similar medication. I simply couldn't function properly. I was scared I was going to lose it all; everything that I had been trying to achieve, everything that I had built, everything that I had accomplished in the last 18 months. It was slipping away from me and my body and mind simply couldn't, wouldn't, do anything about it. Never in my life had I experienced such crushing feelings of despair. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I had no motivation. I was falling apart at the seams. I felt like i was on the very verge of a complete breakdown. The tears that I had been constantly crying had even stopped now. My body was empty of those now too. I had nothing left to give.
I had fallen from my high wire. And as I fell I had to let everything go. I tried to hang on to it all but I knew that in order to save myself that I needed to freefall. Anything I was hanging onto would make the crash to earth worse for me and even more worrying, dangerously worse for them. So I let go of it all.
I closed my eyes, unsure if it would come quickly or I would be falling for a while. I just had to embrace the idea that this part of my life was over and whatever happened next was meant to happen.
Then I stopped falling. Quite suddenly. It wasn't a hard crashing back to earth. There was warmth. There was love. There was care. The feeling took me by surprise but at the same time I had half expected or hoped that it would be like this. It was my safety net. It actually worked. I should never have doubted but there are times when the fog is so thick that you simply can't see beyond it and to put trust in that notion was a huge leap of faith. The voices that had called on me beyond the fog were now real and had identities. However, the safety net wasn't what I expected. Parts of it were always there, as I knew they would be, but there were parts missing. I felt sad at their absence but I understood why those missing parts weren't there. It wasn't their time yet and maybe they were providing a safety net for others plus the advice and help they had given had still shaped the net. There were also new parts. New and uplifting and wholly unexpected parts. I embraced all of the complex tapestry of it, even the parts that were missing as I knew that they are all part of the whole. I learned and felt comfort in the whole. There is a theory that The Universe puts people in your life, for good and bad, so we learn a little about ourselves. My safety net has that in abundance. Comforted and armed with that knowledge, I was lifted up and placed on my high wire again, faith restored with a new balance and new mindset.
So here I stand, once again, on my high wire. But it's different now. I now know what it's like to fall and I now know that my safety net is a palpable and real and beautiful thing. Experience should always teach us how to cope and adjust and learn. I thought that this part of my journey would take longer but it's testament to those I have around me and their love and care and help, that I am back up here with a renewed sense of purpose. The journey and the process is still a long one, that will never change, but The Universe has given me reason to be hopeful, reason to smile and reason to truly appreciate the love that I feel. And that love fills me entirely. It makes me happy. And happy is all I want to be. Isn't that what we should all aim for in life?
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