Embrace the Shitty Day

One day I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, upside down, and in the wrong room, possibly even in the wrong house and in the wrong neighborhood. Nevertheless, I told myself everything was fine. I got up, got ready for the gym, and when I got there my mood was foul. It was as if my mood stepped on a pile of dog shit and the smell kept following me everywhere. Yes, it was very early in the morning and I’m not naturally a morning person. Yes, I’m currently injured and am limited with certain movements, which makes me very sad. And yes, I was going through a bit of boy drama at the time, which I normally overcome by lifting heavy weights, but that was not an option given my injury. Hence, the shit attitude.

However, my brain insisted that I was fine. After all, logically speaking, nothing was wrong. My brain gave a small salute to my emotions in  acknowledgement of these issues but then carried on per usual. I mean really, I’ve been through worse so this is child’s play, right? Wrong. 

I got through half of the class when I started feeling tears forming in my eyes, which for me is a very rare thing. Clearly something was wrong. Normally, I’m more like:

That day, I was more like Leslie Mann, barely able to speak without wanting to burst into tears. Fortunately for me one of the ladies at the gym immediately caught on to my mood so she suggested we go for a walk. I told her what was going on with my life and how I’m more frustrated with how I’m dealing with it more than I was about what was actually happening. And then she told me something that I will never forget. She said,

“Sometimes, people have too high of an expectation on how one should act, including themselves. It’s true that you’re normally very chipper and up, but everyone is allowed to have a bad day. You actually do have a lot going on, especially all at the same time. It’s OK not to be OK. Let yourself have a shitty day.”

While I’ve gotten better over the years in terms of acknowledging my feelings and letting myself feel like shit sometimes, it appears that I still need to learn how to embrace the shitty day even if logically it doesn’t make sense for me to feel that way. After all, since when did emotions run on logic? As I left to go home, she called out to me,

“I hope you have a good shitty day.”

And so I did. I fully embraced the shitty day and ended up having the best shitty day of my life!

Slowly but surely I’m getting closer to getting my shit together…