The Wake Up Call
Hello!
First of all, thank you to everyone who messaged, emailed, and looked out for me at the start of this week. I went to the doctor on Monday afternoon and found out that the headache was indeed a migraine that was likely caused by stress. Of course, I'm incredibly glad that it wasn't something more sinister but to be honest, I'd never ever had a migraine before so this was a wake up call.
If you're at university you'll know that there was significant strike action over the past 4 weeks meaning that many classes were cancelled. I tried not to mention it on here but the lack of structure really got me down. I'd be panicking over deadlines, trying to meet up with friends when I felt incredibly lonely not seeing my course mates, and I was having trouble sleeping, I'd become totally paranoid in my relationship, and I was having a fair few meltdowns.
The increased paranoia meant I was becoming panicky over Joe's workload, his tiredness levels, and whether he was eating properly. All in all, I think he was very patient with me!
On top of that, I had trampolining and music to stress over and I was becoming obsessed with being perfect in both areas.
Incidentally, I did extremely well in both and my solo sections in last Friday's concert went almost weirdly well.... and then the pain hit.
Me being me, I tried to ignore it but ended up prolonging it; collapsed a couple of times and it was only when my body truly refused to function that I had to accept that I'm not super human. All the things I was working myself into a total frenzy about were completely out of my control. I couldn't single handedly restart all the lectures, and they will certainly take the disruption into account when marking. I won't fail. I can't change Joe's workload, neither can I magically give him energy, or make sure he's eating a good amount. He's old enough and ugly enough to look after himself and the amount I can do from 300+ miles away is rather limited. It wouldn't have mattered if the trampolining was a disaster and everyone would have forgotten all about any mistakes I may have made in concerts after a few hours.
Unfortunately, it took a migraine to get me to realise that I can't control everything, and I don't have to be superhuman, and honestly? It really shouldn't have got to that stage. It really wasn't worth it. I think I've got to try and train myself to stop when I feel run down, to ask whether the thing I'm stressing about is really worth getting ill over and in reality, it's probably not.
Look after yourselves!
Lots of Love,
Sarah xxx
