Choices that feel like shit. I’ve been making a lot of them lately, both good and bad. And not any of them made in an emotionally rational state, mostly caused by stress, insomnia and anxiety. And every time I have made this much of a mess in my life before, I have promised myself that next time I will make better choices, be more rational, handle things with grace. And then I wind up back here. Feeling like shit, and unsure where to go from here, and feeling isolated and alone. For the most part, with all the difficult decisions that I have had to make over the last month, my biggest regret is not in making the choices, but in how I chose to execute those choices.

One of the hardest things for me this year was learning to value myself enough to not accept substandard behaviour from others. And then I moved in with a girl who could barely make space for me in the house I was renting from her and didn’t respect me enough to care when I asked her to have consideration with cleaning and making some space. I lived in filth. And despite gentle prodding, she never got the hint and then I exploded. Needless to say I’m moving out but I live in constant barrage of abusive text messages and in an awkward space I feel I can’t relax in.

I made the decision that if I was to date a man, he would be respectful and make time for me and want to be with me. Then I chose guys who were leaving the country, guys who were emotionally available, and guys who would breadcrumb me by text to tell me how amazing I am everyday and then choose to fill in their spare time with everyone else before considering me, never really seeing them.  And I left all of those situations too. Which was the right decision in every case because my gut always told me the right intentions  weren’t there but I chose to listen too late, and then blew all those things up when I was hyper-emotional instead of dealing with things calmly, promptly and rationally. I don’t regret my choices to end things in any case, but I do often regret how I’ve delivered those choices. It has caused more angst and awkwardness than I have needed to deal with in my life with everything else going on.

I said after my last job that if I ever felt as stressed as I did then I would just quit. But now I’m in a job I actually like and still finding that my body is responding to this by not letting me sleep any. And the less I sleep, the more irrational and irritable I become. I become less positive about me, about everything and then I’m in a state of burying myself to hide myself from others or afraid they won’t want to be around me because of my crankiness. I feel worse about myself for this too.

The cycle of stress becomes hard to break and the hard but right decisions weigh down on you and they don’t feel nice. But even though everyone is quick to advise self love and care, I know that a hair cut and colour, new nails and losing weight because you have barely eaten in two weeks don’t make you feel better about those things. You have to turn inward and really reflect for that, and when you really look, the truth is more painful than you can deal with. The hardest choice is to forgive yourself the hurting others. For not loving yourself enough in the moments you lose yourself and forget to maintain your standards with grace. For losing your shit at people when you shouldn’t. The hardest choice is to forgive yourself the mistakes that you make that wind you up here in the first place. But like all the other decisions I have made that have been hard and horrible, I know that this is also the right one. It’s the hardest one because it is the only decision that won’t make you feel like shit. It will liberate you from it.