Rehab

Body rehab. Mind rehab. Soul rehab.

That’s where I’ve been for the last month. That’s what I was up to while I was gone from this page; without a word, without a warning and without any Single Mom anecdotes about how crazy flying solo can get or the wacky things The Trolls said or got up to last.

Why?

Because my cup ran over.

Because everything I thought I could handle, I suddenly couldn’t any more.

All the daily stresses about money and security. All the worries about real love never quite pitching up the way I’d hoped it would by this age. All the health fears. All the regret about people I’ve hurt, all the hatred towards people who’ve hurt me. All the pain, all the built-up frustration, all the unpursued dreams, all the missed opportunities, all the guilt towards not being able to provide the kids with the quality of life they bloody well deserve… into one huge, scary-as-hell nervous breakdown.

And my cup, the one I thought could take any amount of crap and withstand any amount of hurt, reached its fill, and it ran over.

Luckily with age comes wisdom, and so when I woke up four weeks ago with the mother of all anxiety attacks, I knew better than to try and sort this one out by myself.

This was too severe. This was too mammoth. This was too dark. And not even I, The Urban Single Mom, Ms Independent personified, could tackle my way through, or see any type of light in any kind of tunnel.

And so I asked for help.

The good kind. The expert kind. The hospital kind.

I’m not going to lie. Battling through my depression was a thing. A huge thing. The biggest thing of my life.

I talked and cried and prayed and shivered and broke apart on a daily basis. I went through withdrawals so bad I wanted to quit halfway through, I experienced such angst and such profound loneliness there were days I could barely get my food down.

I was pushed and probed with such terrifying questions about my sense of self, my soul journey, my heart’s longing that I literally scared myself to death.

And then suddenly, one day out of the blue, the fog lifted… and I knew with startling clarity what it was the Universe was asking me to leave behind.

In order to find myself. To find my joy. To find my light.

And I did.

Now, I have changed. But the world has not. And that is exactly how it should be.

Because you are your own world, and by virtue of that, responsible for your own peace.

I am no longer the girl who constantly has a drink in her hand; I do weird yoga bendy type of things first thing in the morning which leaves the kids mortified, and I breathe… deeply.

Not those fast, shallow, anxious breaths I’ve been breathing all my life. Real breaths. The type that slow your heartbeat down.

My best friend, a soul who I have known since we were ants, waves, fireflies and mountains, said to me in a moment of dark despair that he no longer craves happiness. He craves tranquillity.

Ditto.

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