Wading Through Quiet Chaos
Sometimes life doesn't fall apart all at once. Sometimes nothing particularly terrible happens. You just slowly start feeling less like yourself.
That was 2024 for me.
I found myself caught somewhere between being okay and not being okay. I wasn't necessarily unhappy, but I wasn't fulfilled either. I was treading water. Doing enough to stay afloat, but rarely feeling like I was actually moving forward.
Work was a big part of that.
I experiencd a kind of disappointment in myself that was difficult to explain. I wasn't failing. I was still doing my job. I was still showing up. But I knew I wasn't giving it everything I had.
And that was hard, especially when I was trying to encourage the people around me to bring their best.
How do you tell other people to find their spark when yours feels like it's barely there?
Outside of work, that exhaustion followed me home.
There were so many times I wanted to go out. I wanted to see my friends, grab a drink, go somewhere new, laugh, be around people. I wanted to feel like I was participating in my own life again.
But a lot of the time, I stayed home.
Not because I didn't want to go. I just couldn't seem to get myself to go.
I'd sit in my apartment and scroll through pictures and stories of people out doing things, living their lives, and I'd feel this weird combination of happiness for them and sadness for myself.
I wanted to be out there too.
I just didn't know how to get there.
And then there was the mirror.
The mirror became less about seeing myself and more about finding everything I thought was wrong with me.
I would look at my body and immediately start picking it apart. I would think about the workouts I hadn't done, the meals I hadn't prepared, the days when I didn't have the energy to take care of myself the way I thought I should.
I was incredibly hard on myself.
Harder than I would ever be with anyone else.
That's probably one of the things that stands out to me most when I look back. I had somehow become someone I was constantly trying to correct instead of someone I was trying to understand.
That's what made the chaos so difficult.
It wasn't loud. It didn't demand my attention.
It just slowly made everything feel heavier.
I was functioning, but I wasn't really living.
And somewhere underneath all of that, there was still a part of me asking for something very simple.
Rest.
Space.
Connection.
A little kindness.
When I finally slowed down enough to hear it, I realized I didn't need to become someone else. I needed to come back to myself.
Maybe that's what this season was really trying to teach me.
That what I was going through didn't define me. It was showing me something.
It showed me the cycles I had gotten comfortable living in. It showed me what needed to change. It showed me where I needed to soften. And maybe most importantly, it showed me what I needed to let go of.
Looking back now, I can see that I was still moving forward.
It just didn't always look like it.
Sometimes progress is obvious. Sometimes it's getting out of bed. Sometimes it's going to work when you really don't want to. Sometimes it's answering the phone. Sometimes it's taking a shower, making yourself eat, or simply deciding to try again tomorrow.
I didn't win every battle that year.
But I showed up for every single one of them.
I didn't move mountains.
Sometimes getting out of bed was the mountain.
Nobody knew how many times I had to pull myself together.
But I woke up on the hard days.
And I survived.
I don't think survival should ever be dismissed as something small.
Sometimes survival is the beginning of everything else.
