One Day, I Snapped

 And I’m glad I did.

A few weeks ago, I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror that both confused and horrified me. I was brushing my teeth, my hair was hanging in my face, and I looked up to tuck it behind my ear while trying to not get toothpaste in it.

The image that stared back at me was not a pleasant one.

I look in the mirror every day, of course I do, and I am not sure what about this particular time made me do a double take when I saw my reflection, but I did. I finished brushing my teeth and really looked at myself for a good long time.

My hair was limp and unwashed; it hadn’t felt the heat of a blow dryer or curling iron in weeks because I just washed and let it dry. That’s not a good look on me because I don’t have wash and wear hair. I hadn’t been to the salon since early October. Going 4 months without visiting a salon is not a good look on me, either.

The weight I’ve gained has rounded out my jawline and smoothed the wrinkles from my eyes and cheeks. I had no makeup on, hadn’t for days, and the redness that is always on my face seemed more vivid than normal. I turned sideways and could clearly see the weight I have put on lately in my belly.

And I was so disgusted I stuck out my tongue at the mirror.

“How did I let myself get to this pathetic place?” I wondered.

It didn’t help that it had been cold and snowy, so I hadn’t been out in the fresh air in weeks, other than walking to and from my car or a few warmish evenings on my porch. I told myself that was why I looked so bad. I also started to blame it on a medication I took for a few weeks that caused me to put on some weight and puffed out my face.

But I was still disgusted because it was more than that, and I know I have let myself “go.” Not because I don’t care—I do care. But because I usually don’t have the mental energy to put into hair and makeup. After staring at myself in the bathroom mirror for far too long, I started scrolling through the pictures on my phone. Pictures don’t lie. I remembered a horrible man who took our photos at Share years ago telling me I had sad eyes. I laughed and told him I wasn’t feeling sad, and he replied, “The eyes don’t lie.” I was so offended, and all of us at the office laughed it off later because he had in some small way insulted each of us.

I remembered his words that day. My eyes do look sad. The camera doesn’t lie.

Neither does the mirror.

I haven’t had the mental energy for much this winter, and my appearance is a casualty of that.

It is not only my looks, though. My entire life is a casualty of my lack of mental and physical energy. Mostly mental.

On that same day, my Christmas decorations were still up. And it was almost MARCH. I sometimes purposely leave greenery and white lights on the stair railings and around the dining room mirror because it brings me cheer during dreary winter days. But usually, it is all down well before March. This year, even my Christmas tree was still up. It had no ornaments on it, and I told myself the lights lift my spirits, but still. My Christmas tree was still up at the end of February.  Last year, I purposely left my skinny silver tree up and decorated it for each season, but this was not that, either. My 8-foot Christmas tree was still up in my family room at the end of February. My silver tree was still up in a corner of the dining room, but it was not decorated for the season—it was full of Christmas ornaments. And I couldn’t use the excuse that I enjoyed the lights, because the lights had all slowly burned out, a sad reminder of what seemed to have burned out in me.

 

That day, after I tore myself away from the dreadful image in the bathroom mirror, I walked around the house and made note of all that was wrong with it. It wasn’t exactly a mess, but it also wasn’t in the condition I like for my house to be in, either, and I had been ignoring that fact for far too long. My dirty laundry basket was overflowing onto the bathroom floor. I had a precarious tower of clean, unfolded\ wrinkled laundry in a basket in the laundry room that I had been piling onto and taking from for weeks.

I could go on, but I won’t. I could blame all my slovenly ways on the bout of Covid I had in late January/early February that is still sapping my energy, but it is more than that, and I know it.

That Saturday, after I finished mentally beating myself up for the sad state of my appearance, home and life, something snapped in me. I didn’t want to spend another moment feeling disgusted with myself, my house or my life. I know I have been through things in the last year that have been rough and beaten me down, but I decided that day that I was tired of using them as permission to neglect my life.

As I did my typical overthinking, I had an epiphany…I have felt guilty for not being able to keep my family together, so why should I give a shit about keeping myself or my home together? When I really dive deep into that, it makes me realize that guilt has left a deep gouge on my soul. Shouldn’t I have been able to hold our family together? Isn’t that what moms and wives do? Especially after devoting 30 plus years to it? If I can’t even do that simple thing, what is the point of anything?

What has happened in my life in the last year has touched all the soft, vulnerable places I have. It has affected every single thing about me…my self esteem has especially taken a hit, and it is not always the best anyway. 

I didn’t know where to begin to fix things, but I resolved on that day that I HAVE to do just that. Fix the things I can and maybe what is out of my control that I can’t fix will be easier for me to deal with. I spent the day taking down most of my Christmas decorations. I felt so much better just doing that one thing that I was inspired to do more, and I made a to do list that I can slowly cross things off of.

I decided the first thing I need to address is my appearance. I made an appointment at the salon and vowed I would stop looking like the mug shot version of myself. You know what I’m talking about—you see women on true crime tv shows who are so put together, pretty hair and makeup, then you see their mugshot from prison and it’s shocking and hard to envision they are the same person. That’s how I felt on the day that a simple gesture of looking in the mirror to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear caused me to snap.

My hair is an easy thing to address. The weight I have gained is a bigger hurdle, and I decided that day that at the very least, I was going to start walking outdoors for 30 minutes, every single day, no matter what the weather was like. It was already dark outside when I made that decision, so I started the next day. Today is day 30 of doing just that, and while most days have been rough because of the cold and rain that March is, and I still become short of breath easily, I’ve started to look forward to my daily walks out in the fresh air. I can’t say sunshine because most days, it’s not sunny. When I breathe in cool, crisp air, I imagine I am breathing in peace and good vibes. I like to listen to music when I walk, but sometimes, I simply listen to the sounds around me. Most days, I have had to force myself to lace up and bundle up, but I haven’t regretted doing so even once. On most days, especially those that are cold and/or rainy, I tell myself this: “I will not regret going for this walk when I get home. But if I don’t go, I will regret that.”

So far, it has worked.

Forcing myself to walk outdoors every day, especially in the winter, is more of a mental challenge than a physical one. I am perfectly capable of walking for 30 minutes every day. It is mental energy that gets me out the door early on a Saturday morning when it is 18 degrees with a windchill hovering around zero. It is definitely mental energy that makes me change clothes at work so I can stop at a park on my way home from work to walk on an icy, rainy day because once I get home, I know I will have a hard time convincing myself to go back out. It sounds dumb, but on the day I made that pact with myself, I thought that if I could make myself do this one simple thing, it might inspire me to do more. At least I hoped that it would.

And it has, most days anyway. I chose to challenge myself to do this one thing for 45 days. Thirty didn’t seem like long enough, and 60 seemed too overwhelming to consider. Thirty days in, and I am seeing a few small changes that are encouraging me to keep on going:

Walking every day has led me back to healthier eating. Why bother dragging myself out into the cold every day if I am going to eat like crap all the time?

Best of all, though, walking every day has also forced me to give myself a bit of grace. Even if I spend all evening sitting on the couch watching tv and crocheting, which I often do, I feel good about the 30 minutes I go out and walk. Especially when the weather is awful.

I don’t know if I have lost weight because I don’t want to feel discouraged if I step on the scale and discover that I haven’t. I do hope that I eventually lose some of the weight I have gained in the last year, but my daily walks have become about much more than weight loss. Walking outdoors every day in all kinds of weather has become as much about my mental health as my physical health. A kind friend told me one day not long ago that I need to give myself grace about my weight gain, that it has been a rough year, and I should not beat myself up about it. I am trying hard to do that, but it’s not easy when I am my own worst critic who easily falls into beat myself up mode.

My next goal is to walk outdoors for one hour a day. I know that will be easier as it warms up, but even if it doesn’t warm up soon (and it probably won’t), I feel ready for another challenge. Last March, I didn’t go out for even one walk. This March, I have walked almost 50 miles outdoors, and March isn’t even over.

I can’t promise myself that I have permanently pulled out of the awful funk I was in for a few months because I haven’t. But I feel more equipped to handle the next round of funk that is bound to strike at some point. If/when it does, I will read back over this and know that I am capable of dragging myself out of it. I know that I didn’t get to the sorry place I am at right now in just a few short weeks and it will take me more than a few short weeks to get out of it, too.

Nothing that I have done since that day I “snapped” has solved all my problems; it hasn’t solved any of them. I still have days where the weight on my heart is too much. Days where thinking about how the decisions I have to make feel too heavy and impossible. But those days and moments of self-doubt and crushing angst are fewer than they were even a month ago, so I am holding on to that and taking it one step at a time.

I will end with this: I have never been one to find any sort of beauty in the gray days of a Midwest winter, but this last month, I have tried to do just that.  I have come to appreciate the way gray branches look against clear blue skies, the unique bark pattern on a tree that I would never notice if it was leafed out. I can appreciate blooming trees and sunny yellow daffodils, even if they are blooming against a backdrop of grays and browns while an icy drizzle pelts my face. On the worst days, either cold or gray or both, I have challenged myself to find something interesting to take pics of. Here are a few.

I also can’t promise myself that I will stop beating myself up for the state of my life. It is winter, but I know spring is coming, sunshine will turn all the gray things green and colorful, and I am looking forward to that. This is a photo I took a couple of weeks ago at one of my favorite parks to walk at. I made it the background on my phone. It's not a pretty picture at all, and it was an ugly, cold, drizzly day. But I envision myself in that cold landscape, sitting on that bench on a cold, gray day waiting for sunshine and my spring to arrive.