What Doesn't Kill You Makes You... Want to Get a Break

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. You might be surprised that Kelly Clarkson wasn't the first to say this. Nietzsche preceded her by almost two centuries. Is it just me? Oh, well. The point is, I fully agree with whoever says that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, but I can't help thinking that sometimes it just warns us about reaching a dangerous limit. It might've not killed you (yay!), but it made you want to get a break.

I'm a master of pushing myself to the limit. Whether it's working a full day schedule with one meal eaten within a minute or overthinking this one scenario in my head to the point I find myself crying hysterically about something I have no control over. I love drama, and drama loves me. And hey, I suppose I'm still here, so all this stress just made me stronger, right? Well, did it?

What better way to start the new year than making all the mistakes you can in the first few days of January so you can know better for the rest of the year? Now, buckle up for a very intimate journey of my failures. Here's a breakdown of what went wrong for me in the first two weeks of 2022 and how I (hopefully) know better now:

Late Nights

See, this one feels so innocent. I love those late-night moments when you know you've got a deadline to meet, so you stay up late and work on last touch-ups. Then, you have a solid 4 hours of sleep and wake up exhausted but manage to continue with your day as usual. But do you always? Well, I don't. It's all fun and games until you get the worst migraine of your life because *sleep wasn't that worthwhile last night*.

My shoulder devil: Well done you. You're doing so well. Look at you, barely keeping your eyes open in front of this laptop. Adorable. How low can we go with the sleep time tonight? 5, 4 hours? I dare you to push it to 4 am and have a lovely 3 hours of sleep tonight, or should I say, this morning? There's some leftover cake in the fridge, by the way. Treat yourself. You deserve it.

My shoulder angel: Do you ever listen anyway? You know, the funny thing is that you always count how many hours of sleep you'll get at 3 am as if you don't know it by heart already. You KNOW that you'll wake up hating your life again and pray you didn't go to bed so late. So why don't you just- Oh, no. No, no, no! Are you really making your way to the fridge right now?! Don't you dare have a slice of that cake!

Promise I make to myself: I'm not old yet, but I already feel like I had a much better tolerance for sleepless nights a few years ago than I have now. Maybe it's stress, maybe long covid, maybe global warming, or perhaps just my body saying: "Enough of this shhh-." The most important thing is that late, sleepless nights were often the reason why I felt like a zombie spiced up with an iced coffee that ended up making me feel even worse a couple of hours later. So I might as well FINALLY close that laptop at 10 pm and call it a day. 11:30 pm latest (still a massive improvement from my side.)

Not Listening to My Body

I do it, or more like don't do it, all the time. Whenever my body aches during work, I keep pretending like it's not happening. It's like I've got a DJ in my head playing loud music to distract me from it. But when the concert (shift) finishes, the music stops and it's just me, myself & pain. While this time, ten times worse than before.

My shoulder devil: Someone's migraine is about to start. How thrilling! Oh, no. Don't bother to go downstairs to get a painkiller. You'd have to go DOWNSTAIRS. And you know what you will have to do if you go downstairs? Go back up. Don't bother. You can make it without it. Coffee? You only had three already. You're so busy. I'm so proud of you! Don't even bother to drink that water! No boost whatsoever.

My shoulder angel: Your water bottle is empty again. Can you please go fill it up? Marcel? Hello? Sure, ignore me. You won't be able to dismiss your headache when it kicks in, though. Why are you running around like a mad chicken? It's not even that busy. Just go downstairs, sit down for five minutes, and drink something. By something, I definitely don't mean coffee! You can already feel the headache starting. Stop hoping this time it will just magically vanish. Get. Some. Rest.

Promise I make to myself: When a migraine kicks in, I know that 90% of the time, it's me causing it. I either forget to drink water for hours, have too much caffeine, wildly stress myself, or didn't get enough sleep. My body always warns me when something isn't right, but I don't always listen. That's most of the time my worst mistake, and I pay for it big time. So next time I start getting a migraine, I put my wellbeing first. Cleaning the entire house when you're unwell isn't the wisest move, neither is having a coffee when your stomach's already upset.

Stressing Myself

If there was a category at the Olympics consisting in stressing yourself on time, I'm pretty confident I'd come back home with a gold medal. When you worry, it usually means that you care, which on the one hand, is not that bad. However, worrying, stressing, being anxious is super unhealthy. So why do I do it even when there's no need for it whatsoever? Constantly getting into *anxiety mode* is one of my toxic traits.

My shoulder devil: The thing you worry about now is delightful, but you know what's even better? You have class in 2 hours and barely went through anything! You're going to humiliate yourself again. I mean, it's bound to happen. Well done on taking that extra shift at work. Who would want to use that evening to study anyways? OH NO! I'm pretty sure someone left a hairdryer on. I'm almost confident you left it on. Or was it the iron? By the way, didn't you miss a deadline for something yesterday?

My shoulder angel: Marcel, BREATHE. How do you even manage to stress simultaneously about ten different things? No, you didn't leave the iron on. It's broken, remember? Duh! If you don't do well today, there's always another class! You'll get wrinkles because of all this stress. The deadline you're thinking about is in a month. Relax. Why are you thinking about this now? If you take one extra shift at work, I'll need a therapist. Stop this. You don't even need it!

Promise I make to myself: The bad thing about always being stressed is that your body gets used to it, and you can feel it getting anxious before you even think about anything. I'm not going to worry about things out of my control or too far in the future. I want to focus more on here and now (however cheesy it may sound.) Worrying incoming? Maybe it's time for a nap.