Life lessons from a sucky situation

What’s up? It’s been awhile:) This post serves a couple purposes. The first is that I’m getting more people visiting this site from things I’ve published on pinterest (welcome, I’m hyped that you’re here) and you don’t know me yet, so here’s a little taste of plain and simple Ellie. The second reason is that I shut this blog down for quite a few months with no explanation. So this is the explanation:) The third reason is I’m a little kid when it comes to life experiences. I’ll explain:

You know how when a little kid gets new shoes they’ll run over to you and say, “Look, my new shoes make me go SO fast,” and then they race to the nearest wall and back again to show you? Well, that’s me. My close friends hear all about the stupid, funny little things that made me smile throughout the day. ALL of them. Life sucked in a big way up until about a month ago, and now I can’t stop smiling because I learned so dang much from it that I almost think it was worth it. And I want to share the excitment with someone. Let’s get into it:)

The backstory

I’m going to try to keep this brief because this isn’t the point of the post haha, but this is the context. Back in November my dermatologist perscribed me an oral antibiotic called Doxycycline. He didn’t give me any fine print warnings besides the basic “anything you take internally can have side effects” because not many people experience side effects to the level that I did from this medication. So I didn’t think twice about it.

Looking back, I can see how things started to change pretty immediately. But the side affects built so slowly that I had no idea anything was even happening until it was way out of control. At first I just thought it was major PMS. Then I thought it was seasonal stuff I was experiencing. I really dislike winter. But it’s not like the winter months ever changed my personality before.

I’ve heard of medication completely changing people, usually in reference to birth control, but I had no idea how real it was. I can’t even describe to you how wrong everything felt. I’ve always been a pretty confident person, but out of nowhere I started feeling insecure about the silliest things. Things I’d never, ever worried about before. And then, around the middle of December I started feeling anxiety for the first time in my life. Geez, that stuff is CRAZY. Thoughts circulated in my head that I couldn’t get to go away for the life of me, even though I knew they were unreasonable and wrong. The only way I can describe it is that it felt like someone else was yelling at me in my head, all of the time. I have a lot of respect for people who deal with that every day.

I cried about everything, for no reason. It was like my mom died or something. I started having stomach pain when I ate food, and as the cute little cherry on top, I couldn’t sleep. In a nutshell, the sky was falling and I was very, very confused. Haha, I wrote a million gratitude lists because usually that cheers me right back up and I move on with my day. It didn’t seem to help, but now I have all these cute lists on my phone to go back and read so not a total loss:)

The second we figured out that doxycyline was the issue, I stopped taking it and the change was immediate. Man, that stuff was everything I didn’t need in my body I guess. But I feel like me again! It is an insane relief to have my brain back. I think the only downside of this (for everyone I live with at least) is that I’m back to singing in the shower. All I have to say is drugs are wild. But the point of this post is what I learned, and that’s what I’ve been excited to share. So moving on:)

How to swear

Aha, I promise I learned a lot of good things too…But it would be unrealistic to pretend I handled everything like a saint when in fact, I did not. I’ve always tried not to swear and I’d been doing pretty good. But there are some thoughts and feelings that just deserve colorful language, you know? So the floodgates opened and it was pretty satisying while it lasted, not gonna lie. But I don’t really like the vibe and I’m trying to be like Jesus so I’d like to say I’m in remission.

Bad coping mechanisms

Okay this is so so good. You know when you go through something hard it magnifies all your bad habits to the max? I discovered about a million things I do when I’m frustrated that aren’t helpful. And that’s so good because now that I’m aware of it, I can fix it. Here are the two biggest habits I noticed were causing problems:

Hitting the reset button

I’ve known this about myself but I didn’t really realize it was as unhelpful as it is. When I’m not happy with the trajectory of my life, I hit a reset button. I quit a project or I start five new ones, and I ditch whatever I’m working towards to find out what needs to be fixed so things can keep progressing in my life. Still, I’ve always known exactly what I want my future to look like, and my “reset” typically just affects my current projects and hobbies, not long term goals. Really, I just hate feeling like I’m a victim of my circumstance. I really hate that haha. I’m too stubborn for it. So I look for what I can do to fix things, which I think is a virtue until it’s taken way too far.

I’m pretty sure my family and friends got whiplash from the amount of decisions I made and unmade in my life while all of this was going down. I kept thinking, “I must be feeling this way because something I’m doing is wrong.” So that was when I shut down the blog (which I had been so excited about). I looked for new jobs in different fields, I even looked for jobs in other states. Questioned my major, which I’ve known I wanted to pursue since highschool, and second guessed about a million other decisions in my life. I put a lot of pressure on the people around me just trying to feel like my life was still moving forward and things were still getting accomplished.

And now I know that sometimes life is just hard and that’s not something to panic about. I think what I really was doing was running away from what I felt, and the second I stopped being a sissy and owned up to the idea that I was the problem, and not any outside circumstance, I stopped trying to take apart my life to fix it.

Silence

My mom started calling me out on acting different all the way back in November when I first started taking doxycycline. I told her I had it covered, just needed to fix my attitude and things would be good again. Except, nothing I tried helped. Everyone knew something was up but the worse I felt the less I wanted to talk about it. So we all just went around getting more and more frustrated.

Really, I just didn’t want anyone worrying about me because “I’m a grown woman and I can take care of myself.” Turns out, a life crisis is not the time to be prideful. Also, it literally wasn’t that deep. If I could look December Ellie in the eyes and say, “get over yourself, everyone struggles and it’s not a big deal to admit you have a problem,” then I think I could have solved the problem a lot sooner. I’m grateful I have family and friends who called me out on my bs instead of putting up with it. In the end, that’s what it took to get things figured out.

God is good all the time

I held on the the hope that everything happens for a reason like a mad woman. God is good, I believe that. I know He loves us. Let me tell you, I talked His ear off through this whole experience. And He gave me peace. I’ll be digging through the lessons learned from this for a long time, and I’m not completely satisfied with how everything turned out, especially regarding some of the people who were in my life at the time. But people go crazy exploring “what ifs” so I’m just focusing on things I can control. I learned a lot about myself and the next time life kicks my butt I’ll know to deal with it a little better. Without throwing my future goals out the window, or my relationships. I’d say that’s a worthwhile lesson and I’m grateful for it.

Sun’s out 🙂

I was the student body vice president in highschool and I debated a lot with the Principle about certain policies on behalf of the students. At the end of the year he told my dad, “Ellie is the perfect combination of velvet and steel.” Which is cool and all but the past four months I’ve felt a bit more like roadkill. Teehee, good thing things get better.

I have my fire back, so here’s what’s new: I started a window washing business because I had time outside my regular job, and it’s going really well. My first week I made friends with an old lady in a retired home neighborhood, and she called all her retired friends to tell them about me. Blessings, because I haven’t had to find my own business since then. I wash their windows, we become friends, and they call all their retired friends who also want their windows washed. I don’t know what I love more, working outside in the sun or having tons of adopted grandmas. It’s quite simply the best thing ever.

I started donating plasma on the side. It’s my adventure fund, so I can save money and still experience life. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

• Drove to Idaho twice to use my friends free Targhee pass (and take advantage of the hot tub by her apartment bc nothing is colder than snowboarding when the snow soaks into your clothes)
• Took a day trip to climb in Joes valley
• Ordered stickers of my cousins’ (clothed) butt to stick around her apartment (Yeah, I’m funny)
• Bought a Nerf Gun to snipe my brother while he brushes his teeth at night (he started it)
• Purchased an unholy amount of road trip snacks in the form of fresh bevs, hot cheetos, and Idaho Spuds (not the potato kind) I can only find them at gas stations and I think I’m the only person who keeps them in business but they are so dang good
• Bought supplies at home depot to make a chair that can be carried by multiple people up a mountain because I have a friend who can’t walk but really wants to go on some hikes this summer so we’re making that happen
• Signed up for a short triathlon in Rexburg on the 12th of April

Alllll that to say: Life is good. And hard. And every experience is important and worth learning from. Every single one. It’s for sure a lot easier to say that on the other side of a tough moment. But that’s the exciting discovery I made this month.

Thanks for reading 🙂

I’m glad you’re here.

-El