Elsabeth's adventures in Tumblrland

Posting some thoughts on this on here because instagram isn’t the place I put thoughts.

While for me there wasn’t a subtle transition of thoughts like the above quote implies. I remember the day this year, I think it was the 6th of August, when I was visiting a close friend who has moved far away with some other uni friends who I don’t see often. We were supermarket shopping (which I find really taxing) when I just broke down and started crying because my thoughts were suddenly no longer that the world would be better off without me and I was a huge burden who screwed everything up but that I wanted to live, I wanted to live. I was crying because I wanted to live and it was so hard, I didn’t know how to live.

I don’t know particularly what changed from one day to the next to change my perspective from better off dead. I do know I stopped giving so much energy to people who repeatedly hurt me, recognised how hard my internal voice was being on myself and that I would never treat anyone else that way and started taking note of when that happened. I also really threw myself into being focused at work and not letting my personal life be involved and asking any and every question I could to try and understand things, because if I was going to kill myself it didn’t matter if I screwed up and looked stupid (side note: since doing this works improved and seemingly no one things I’m stupid?)

Also significantly, because I was in such a bad place with food it became really easy to tell which foods made my body feel better (carrots, dried fruit, celery, lettuce) and which made me feel like I had less energy (crisps, certain pizzas, garlic bread, biscuits) so I started often eating the good foods and cutting down on the bad. Also that good sleep made an insane difference to my mental state, but that also included just staying awake if I woke up within two hours of the time I needed to get up because that two hours going back to sleep would involve some exhausting unsettling dreams.

I know that treating my thyroid condition has made a major difference. Even on too low a dose, the first week of taking it I felt like super woman. Suddenly I could do anything and it was amazing. When that wore off I was worried I was never going to have energy again but the right dose (which I started taking just after august) has made a huge difference. I can now skip a meal and not immediately crash out. (My coworkers would keep telling me to sit down because I’d turn grey which actually would have been really useful for Halloween).

It turns out having energy is incredibly important for being able to function as a real human (who knew?) , and on top of medically having no energy because of undiagnosed thyroid (I’m not exactly sure when it happened but I didn’t have another period after January 2022 and august to September 2022 I lost 10 kg so something was up) I was pushing myself to always be social, always do things because otherwise I was letting someone down. Now I’m on the right dose, the only things I allow myself to be super hard on myself about are not eating and sleeping properly (in the last 3 weeks I’ve actually been happy and it turns out when I get happy I throw self care out the window) I’m finding it easier to do a lot of things (supermarkets take me out still, but we’ll get there) I’m still working on making time for myself, steps have been taken but it’s the hardest thing to shift.