Reflection on a Work Day

It's 9:22am on a Friday and I'm done with my work in the office until the mail comes in around 11:00. I've got Cookie Clicker running in the background of my Mozilla browser and the Chrono Trigger soundtrack playing through my headphones. This week has been slow, but some days have gone faster than others. And today I have my highlighter yellow [WORK NAME] shirt on, so you can't miss me even if you tried.

After a major blowout last month with my husband, things have been remarkably better than they have been since April 2016 when I was diagnosed with a pretty hard-hitting disease by the doctor. It was an earth shattering and unexpected piece of my life that I never thought I would have to deal with and it damaged my self esteem to the point where I could barely function. I could go through my daily functions and get to work on most days, but I was so depressed and in such a dark place that I thought I could never be fully happy again for the rest of my life. The biggest blowout fight of my life with Husband is what finally shook me out of a thirteen month funk. When you're in a bad place and you're hurting, it can be nearly impossible to empathize and notice that others are hurting, too. That's what happened to me and our fight was so emotionally intense that I was finally able to see how hard things had gotten for Husband. It was the fight that nearly caused a divorce, but it was also the fight that saved my life and in turn our relationship. Husband feels like he can help me through my ups and downs now when before he felt like he had exhausted all of his ways to try and help me.

My life has changed so much of the last year, too. In September we went through the process of buying our first home. We bought at exactly the right time and we're incredibly fortunate to have locked in a thirty year mortgage rate on our home as rental prices are soaring in our area. It makes me enjoy paying our mortgage bill every month and my favorite thing in the world is that fact that we pay extra toward our principal every month. We'll pay off our mortgage three years early at this rate and with potentially (positive) life changing event in my near future, we might be able to up our additional principal payments  and build our home equity even faster. Husband might think I'm crazy, but I almost jumped up and down with excitement when I noticed that our principal amount on our payments started going up $1.20 a month instead of the original $1.10 since we started additional payments. It's extremely rewarding to see that our extra bit of work is paying off less than a year since we started payments.

But after the stress and events of buying our condo, the fact that we were getting married in February began to set in and I became a truly nervous wreck. I began having panic attacks and anxiety attacks which were so bad I would get to the point where I couldn't breathe and my asthma was so bad we considered going to the Emergency Room to make sure my windpipe didn't close up. It was incredibly scary and there was more than one occasion where I seriously considered calling the whole wedding off because of how sick I was getting from trying to plan everything out. With the help of Husband's and my mom's family, though, we were able to pull through and the wedding ended up being the most amazing day of my life. It went by in an absolute blur, but I know for a fact that nothing will ever be able to top how perfect the day was. After our wedding, though, the dynamics of Husband's and my relationship seemed to change in ways that I never expected. We started to be more frustrated with each other and had less patience in each of our interactions. As I have talked to others over the last two and a half months, though, our bumps in the road seem to have been normal. Let me note, though, that they felt absolutely terrible. Since the big fight, though, we're best friends again and I honestly don't think that I could be happier than I right now. I've been told that I am "the sunshine of the office" again which seems miraculous.

And work, well that's it's own animal. I work in an office with three men and almost twenty women. Yeah, I'm Little Miss Sunshine again, but right now I have to poke my head into my boss's office every day and remind him that each day is a good one. The events of the day are going to happen, but what really matters is how you react to them. (God, this feels so weird to say after being so miserable for thirteen months...) Plus, when you add a cup of coffee to your morning with creme brulee creamer in it, you can't really have a bad start to your day. I'm impressed that I can have caffeine again, though. When my anxiety was really, really bad, I had to completely stay off of it or I wouldn't be able to sleep. I'd have nightmares that would wake me and keep me up all night. And now I'm fine. I'm sleeping like a baby and I'm drinking my morning coffee like it's just a normal part of life. It bewilders me.

But that's the new normal and I want to document it. I want to see how things bend and flex and transpire as I live my mid-twenties and eventually my thirties. I always joke that I'm an "old man on the inside," so maybe it's time to see if that's true. Am I as courageous as Husband says for all that's happened in the course of my life and our relationship? Will we actually do all the traveling that we say we want to do over the next decade (and beyond)? I know that we'll be doing our first excursion to the Bahamas for our honeymoon next month, but whether or not the travel bug will really bite us is to be seen. Hopefully there will be a lot of pictures from our trip which I'll be able to post here, but it all depends on Husband and me remembering to actually take the photos!