A Mixed Week, it Was!

Last week was a mixed bag for me. 

I found myself in a melting pot of rage, fear, frustration, anxiety, worry, all the while, oscillating between feeling hopeful and drowning in despair!

These last few months have taught me one thing and that one thing has been my only way to tame the monkey mind from such oscillations…I’ve learnt to be regular with my exercises and workouts. Six days a week seems to be less than what I need right now to deal with things as they come, week on week. And yet, that seventh day of rest is what my body needs, I’m told. I understand. That’s why I don’t fight back my urge to break a sweat on a Sunday. I take it easy. 

But when you have easy Sundays and you’ve not had a gruelling workout to douse those raging flames that life throws at you, how do you deal with things? 

I tend to internalise a lot of things when this happens. And more often than not, I find an unwanted visitor at the door—the migraine! 

Last week, I was in the grips of a severe migraine attack that left me feeling exhausted and frustrated. Two whole days were gone, just like that, with me being cooped up in a dark room, struggling to cope with the pain.

My positivity was taken over by a fatalistic line of thought. The focus and the determination got drained out and nothing, absolutely nothing worked to lift my spirits. 

For those of you who’ve never experienced it before, the aftermath of a migraine attack is always so much more than just the pain—it’s like a massive storm that has just passed over you, leaving you shaken and tired to the core.

So, on a day like that, when I do pull myself out of the mess, I learn to acknowledge that some days will not be mine and that’s okay too. That we’re not going to be positive or happy or upbeat about life some days. That mixed bag of emotions, with all the raw feelings in it, then becomes a repository of the many reflections and life lessons that I will dip into, ever so often, to fuel me as a writer. Beyond the unwanted emotions, lies ample food for thought that helps me to propel myself forward. 

Actually, if we learn to look beyond the pain points that often plague us, the rearview mirror isn’t always bad. In fact, it does teach one a lot about oneself, about what it means to buckle up and get going when the going gets tough. It tells one that it is no mean feat that despite the odds one has had the courage to show up and honour the commitments that one has made to oneself and to others.

It’s isn’t just about things that didn’t go right but what we often miss is the fact that it tells us in the most unlikely ways, how far we’ve come in life. We don’t realise that often enough, especially when we beat ourselves up for the things that didn’t turn out right in our lives.

That’s when I say to myself—here is one thought that I must hold onto, in order to go on. Suddenly, the road ahead appears to be a little less hazy and things begin to look up again.

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Written as part of our #SoulfulSunday freewriting exercise—along with Vinitha, Shilpa and Anamika.