Today was an emotional day, to say the least. This entire week was, actually. And I just think I finally hit my breaking point. I have been working nonstop over the last few weeks and this last week I have worked late every day. I have been stressed, overwhelmed, and exhausted. And today when I got home from work, I broke down. I could feel it coming. I could feel the tension in my chest. The emotional block. The volcano of emotions simmering just below the surface and about to burst; waiting on my mind and body to say its ok. It was one of those moments where I knew I just needed a good cry and I would feel better. I knew I needed to feel my emotions. I had been pushing them off just to push through. But all I did was push it off until I couldn’t anymore; until I broke.

And oh did I break. I broke into a million pieces and I couldn’t figure out how to put them back together. I spiraled into an anxiety attack. My negative thoughts racing in my head telling me I’m not good enough. That I failed in many capacities today. That I’m terrible at my job and everyone hates me. That I’m not capable of moving up in my career if I can’t figure out how to not let this happen. I tried to breathe, I tried to counteract my negative thoughts, I tried so many things and I just couldn’t put myself back together again. I was broken and there wasn’t anything I could, or even anything I really wanted, to do about it. I was exhausted and had zero energy to fight it off.

Throughout all of this, I had a distinct moment of just not wanting to be alone. I felt angry that I didn’t have a partner to go home to. I was angry that I didn’t have a particular person I could call to cry to. I so badly wanted to reach out and have someone comfort me, and yet I couldn’t figure out who that was or how to ask for that. And then I thought I should be able to do it myself. If there is anything I have realized about myself it is that I don’t know how to ask for or accept help. And I think that is what led to today. I kept thinking back on the last week and asking myself what I could have done differently to prevent this from happening. How could I have prevented myself from feeling overwhelmed and ultimately breaking. I wondered if there were areas I could have prepared more or asked others for more help. And honestly, just that thought is progress. The fact that most of my thinking here was focused on how I could have had others help me instead of how I could have done better, is huge. Now, that perfectionism was still there. I still thought I could have done better. But I also realized that I could have done better at letting go and asking for help. I took on a lot this week. Maybe more than I should have, although that is difficult to admit. I gave a lot of myself to students, colleagues, and more. I gave my entire self to my job and I left very little for myself. And that isn’t ok. I love my job. Even after this week, even in the midst of the chaos, I love my job. That is why I give so much of myself to it. But I can’t give so much of myself that I don’t have anything left when I get home.

There’s a lot I could go into about what and why I broke when I got home today, but that’s more than this post warrants, and honestly isn’t really the point. For now, what I will say is that while I was breaking I cried, “I’m tired of fixing myself.” It was a cry of exhaustion. Tired of feeling like the only one who can help me. Tired of doing it all alone, or at least feel like I’m doing it alone. Tired of feeling like God is keeping me alone. Tired of isolating myself, whether purposefully or not. Tired of working on myself. Tired of trying to be perfect. I don’t know how to be a mess. I don’t know how to let others see me as a mess. I don’t know how to be ok with making a mistake and not letting it define me. I don’t know how to let others help me. And so when the thought, “I’m tired of fixing myself,” came to mind, what followed was “you don’t need to fix yourself.” And that is a very hard statement to believe.

I have grown and changed so much and I am incredibly proud of that. I have tried to heal and work through my anxiety and regulate my own emotions, all while not being a burden to other people. None of this is inherently bad. We should work towards these goals. We should do the work ourselves and not rely on others to do the work for us. But we also can’t and shouldn’t do this work alone. We shouldn’t work so hard at these things that we forget we are also still human. We shouldn’t work towards perfection because perfection doesn’t exist. Accepting myself as I am, my most talkative, pessimistic, perfectionist, controlling, anxious, messy self, is one of the hardest things I have had to learn how to do. And what makes that even harder is the fact that I may have to learn this for the rest of my life.

One of the reasons my breakdown hurt so much was because I thought I had figured out how to keep it from happening. I was ‘healed’ wasn’t I? I go to therapy, I journal, I know what I need to do to try and prevent this from happening. And yet it still happened. I still broke. I still got overwhelmed. I still internalized everything. And allowing it all to still happen, made me feel like a failure and like all my progress was lost. But what was different this time, is I didn’t let myself sit in that. I didn’t self-isolate. I reached out and asked for help. And I am so glad I did.

Usually when I get like this I’ll call my mom or dad. And while I did want to do that, I also just really wanted a friend. I wanted someone who would understand. I wanted someone who I was comfortable around. And I had someone in mind, but I hadn’t called her like this before and that terrified me. It terrified me that I would burden her. It terrified me that I would be too much for her. It terrified me that she wouldn’t like this part of me and that maybe this would push her away. But I knew this was my fear talking. I knew it wasn’t true because I knew her and I knew our friendship. And I knew that I didn’t want to go through my pain alone. So I reached out. And you know what happened? She called me immediately. And that alone meant more than she will ever know. To some this may sound so simple. But if you are anything like me, this was not easy. Sharing in our pain can be really difficult and yet it is also one of the most loving and beautiful things we can do for each other. One of things I was struggling with was feeling like the good feedback I got yesterday didn’t apply to today and that I ruined it all with how my day went. I felt like I could change everyone’s minds about me in a matter of a day. That one wrong move meant everyone could start to hate me. This goes a little deeper into my people pleasing tendencies, but we won’t get into that. My friend responded with “you’re still you. The you yesterday is still the you today.” A simple response, and yet a profound one. I’m still me. At the core, I do know who I am, even if I lose sight of that every once in awhile.

I was afraid our entire call would just be me in tears. But it actually turned into me laughing and eventually moving through my emotions. One simple phone call changed the trajectory of my night. One moment of asking for help and choosing to be vulnerable. One moment of doing a hard thing. I’m not magically ‘fixed,’ but I do feel a lot better and I feel very loved. Maybe one day I will learn how to not let myself get to this point or learn how to regulate my emotions better. But in the meantime, I hope that I will learn to love myself at my worst. I hope that I will believe that I’m not difficult to love. I hope that I will continue to ask for help and not do it all myself. I hope that I will remember the value of sharing in pain and vulnerability. I hope that I will continue to grow and change and learn, but not try to fix every part of myself. I hope that I will see the beauty in the broken and see it as an opportunity to get closer with God and with the people He has surrounded me with.