I miss me.
I miss the me that felt full of life, the me that loved seeing people, going out, working in the city. The me that felt alive.
The me at the moment, the me in the middle, if you will, struggles to leave the house to send a parcel, seeing people feels like a huge mental effort, working outside of the home fills me with a dread I don’t even understand. I feel like half a human most of the time.
I don’t feel sorry for myself, I feel frustrated, sometimes angry even with myself and with my body and brain. I don’t want to feel this almost constant grief for that version of myself, the one that could do more, feel more and want more.
And then there’s the guilt, because I simply don’t have the energy to give to other as I once did, I don’t even have the energy to give to myself most of the time and that’s the part I struggle with the most. I feel like I’ve conned people, reeled them in with this fun, kind, supportive version of me and then shut up shop.
This change didn’t happen overnight. Burnout from a toxic workplace, perimenopause (obvs), and years of being permanently switched on finally caught up with me, shattering my nervous system. Slowly but surely, the things that once lit me up started to feel like effort.
I am fully aware of how lucky I am to have been able to leave my job when I desperately needed to, to have the most supportive and understanding husband and to have amazing friends who haven’t given up on me, even when I want to give up on myself.
The frustration with myself is constant. I want to cry. I want my spark back. Wine and distractions don’t help. I can see now that my body’s been in survival mode, not failure mode.
I’m learning that I can’t force myself back to who I was; I have to coax myself back.
Healing isn’t glamourous, it’s a word that thrown around I know but that’s what it is and it’s slow, repetitive and gentle – all the things I usually rebel against
Now I’m learning to shift from “fixing” myself to rebuilding trust with my body and mind. It’s not something I’ve ever had to consider before, let alone put into action and it’s f*cking hard, because the world doesn’t just stop because I’m not feeling it and I can’t the outside world out, as much as I sometimes want to. Not because I don’t want anyone or anything from it, but because I desperately do but I know I need to rest and reset and that’s hard to do sometimes when the world is forcing its way in.
Safety feels like the top priority so anything that feels unsafe – anything or anyone new or unknown – can send me into a spiral, and back to square one and with my limited energy that can often be a huge struggle.
So I’m starting with the small things: water, protein, movement, fresh air, consistency, sensory comfort, micro-connections. I’m going to treat it like a little experiment.
And I’m learning to accept that the Clare in her forties might be different from the Clare in her thirties and that’s probably a good thing. She drinks less, parties less. Maybe calmer and quieter isn’t worse, it’s wiser.
Maybe I need to stop trying to get “old me” back and work on creating a version that fits who I am now.
It’s okay to pause. It’s okay to be tired. Rebuilding doesn’t mean becoming someone new, it means coming home to myself again
