When Life Feels Like Too Much

|

I have had the year from hell.

There really isn’t a more elegant way to put it.

So many things have gone wrong this year that, if I’m being completely honest, there have been moments when I’ve wondered whether all of it might actually break me. Physical injuries. Health challenges. Growing pains with my children as they figure out who they want to become and what they want their lives to look like. Financial stress. A business struggling to keep up with an economy that feels increasingly uncertain and a world that seems to change by the hour. Struggles in my relationship, made harder by the weight of everything else.

And then there are the things that don’t fit neatly into a category.

Watching my parents age has been one of them. There is a particular sadness in watching people who once seemed so vibrant slowly become different versions of themselves. It has made me think about my childhood in ways I didn’t necessarily expect at this stage of my life. I find myself remembering the joyful parts, the funny stories, the ordinary moments that made up our family life, while also looking honestly at some of the ways my parents raised us and the baggage my siblings and I have each carried into adulthood.

And, naturally, that has led me to wonder about my own parenting.

Did I make the right choices?

Did I say the right things?

Did I give my children what they needed?

My children have grown into genuinely lovely adults, and I am incredibly proud of them. But that doesn’t stop the questions. I sometimes wonder what pieces of their childhood they will carry with them. What will they remember with warmth? What will they wish I had done differently? What baggage did they inherit from me?

I suppose this is one of the strange things about getting older. You begin to look backward and forward at the same time.

And Then There Was the Friendship

As if the year needed another plot twist, my best friend of two decades decided to end our friendship.

I don’t use the words best friend casually.

She was the person who knew everything. The things we would never have said out loud to anyone else. The embarrassing stories. The private fears. The history. The people we had been before we became the women we are now. We had stood beside each other through some of life’s biggest moments, including both life and death.

We had been friends for twenty years.

And then we disagreed about a choice she made.

To me, it was a disagreement between two people who loved each other. I thought we could disagree and still remain friends. She experienced it very differently. She saw my disagreement as a betrayal of what she believed to be her truth.

And just like that, the relationship changed.

There is still so much I don’t understand about how we got here.

I miss her deeply.

And, at the same time, there is a part of me that feels relieved not to be carrying the additional drama and chaos that has surrounded her choices into an already incredibly complicated year.

Those two feelings seem as though they shouldn’t be able to coexist.

But they do.

I can miss someone terribly and still know that the relationship, as it existed, was no longer good for me.

There are some losses that hurt most in the moments when you instinctively reach for the person who used to understand.

The Hardest Part Is Having No One to Tell

This is the part I didn’t expect.

When something difficult happens, she was the person I would have told.

Not necessarily because she could fix it. Usually she couldn’t. But because she knew the backstory. She understood the context. I didn’t have to explain who everyone was or why something mattered or why a particular situation hurt.

She just knew.

Now there are moments when something happens and my first thought is, I need to call her.

And then I remember.

That loss has been its own kind of grief.

I have friends. Wonderful friends. I have a partner who loves me and who has been beside me through this year. I have people in my life who care about me deeply.

But there are some relationships that occupy a particular place in your life, and when they disappear, you notice the empty space.

There is no replacing twenty years of shared history.

And perhaps I don’t need to.

Perhaps this is another thing I’m learning about loss. Not everything that ends needs to be replaced by something identical. Sometimes you simply have to acknowledge that something mattered, that you miss it, and that you are continuing forward without it.

I Keep Looking for the Lesson

I have always been a naturally upbeat person.

I am the person who can usually find the good in almost anything. Give me a challenge, and my instinct is to ask, What is this going to teach me?

That question has served me well.

It has helped me move through difficult seasons without getting completely consumed by them. It gives me something to look for when things feel uncertain. A lesson. A new perspective. A reason to believe that the hard thing might eventually make sense.

But this year has tested that part of me.

There have been so many things happening at once that I have occasionally felt exhausted by my own determination to find the lesson.

Maybe I don’t need to find it yet.

Maybe some things are just hard.

Maybe I can be grateful for the lessons eventually without needing to identify them while I’m still in the middle of the storm.

That has been a surprisingly difficult realization for me.

Maybe Resilience Isn’t Always About Being Strong

We talk about resilience as though it means standing tall, learning the lesson, becoming stronger, and emerging from adversity better than we were before.

I’m not sure that’s always what resilience looks like.

Sometimes resilience is getting through the day when you don’t particularly feel resilient.

Sometimes it is making dinner, answering the email, showing up for your family, going to work, taking a walk, or getting enough sleep because tomorrow is another day and you know you need to be there for it.

Sometimes it is admitting that you are overwhelmed.

Sometimes it is crying.

Sometimes it is saying, I don’t know what I’m supposed to learn from this yet.

And sometimes it is simply refusing to let a terrible season convince you that your entire life is terrible.

This year has been painful.

But this year is not my entire life.

That distinction matters.

We Carry More Than One Truth at a Time

I think part of what makes a difficult year so exhausting is that there isn’t usually one emotion attached to it.

There are layers.

I can be worried about my parents and grateful for the years I have had with them.

I can be proud of my children and still worry about whether I got things right.

I can miss my friend and know that the friendship had become complicated in ways that weren’t healthy for me.

I can be frustrated about our financial circumstances while knowing that we are fortunate in many other ways.

I can feel tired and still be hopeful.

I can be disappointed and still be grateful.

I can be angry about something and eventually find something to learn from it.

None of those feelings cancel the others out.

Maybe adulthood is partly learning that we don’t have to choose one emotion and make it the truth.

Life can be messy enough to hold all of them.

I don’t need to know exactly where this season is taking me. I just need to keep moving through it.

Right Now, I’m Just Navigating the Rapids

I’ve been thinking about life as a river lately.

Some seasons feel like gentle water. You know where you’re going, the current is manageable, and you can enjoy the scenery along the way.

Other seasons feel like rapids.

You are holding on, trying to steer, watching for rocks, and hoping you don’t lose your footing. You don’t have the luxury of admiring the scenery because you’re too busy staying in the boat.

That’s where I feel like I am right now.

In the rapids.

I don’t know exactly when the water will calm down. I don’t know which of these challenges will resolve themselves and which ones will become part of the new landscape of my life. I don’t know what the lessons will ultimately be.

But I do believe there will eventually be calmer water.

There will be an ordinary day when I realize I am not bracing myself anymore.

There will be a morning when the phone doesn’t bring another piece of difficult news. There will be a week when the financial stress feels manageable. There will be conversations with my children that feel less like navigating growing pains and more like enjoying the adults they have become. There will be moments with my parents that I can appreciate without being quite so aware of everything that is changing.

And perhaps, someday, I will think about this year and understand what it was trying to teach me.

Or maybe I won’t.

Maybe it will simply be the year that was incredibly hard.

That is okay, too.

If You’re Having a Year From Hell, Too

I am writing this because I have a feeling I am not the only one.

Maybe your year has been difficult in ways you haven’t told many people about. Maybe you are worried about your parents. Maybe your children are struggling or making choices you don’t understand. Maybe your marriage or partnership feels strained. Maybe money is tight. Maybe your career has taken an unexpected turn. Maybe you are grieving someone who is still alive, grieving a friendship, grieving the person you used to be, or simply wondering when life got so complicated.

Maybe you are carrying several of those things at once.

If you are, I want you to know something.

You don’t have to turn it into a beautiful story yet.

You don’t have to be grateful for the struggle.

You don’t have to know what it is teaching you.

You don’t have to be the strong one every minute of every day.

You can simply acknowledge that this is hard.

And then you can keep going.

Not because you know exactly where the river is taking you, but because you’ve made it this far.

Eventually, the Water Will Calm

I don’t know what comes next.

That is perhaps the most honest thing I can say.

But I know myself well enough to know that I will keep looking for the light. I will keep loving my people. I will keep showing up. I will keep trying to learn, even when the lesson isn’t obvious. I will keep believing that a difficult season is not the same thing as a difficult life.

And I will keep navigating the rapids.

Because somewhere ahead, there is flat water.

Eventually, the current will slow down. The noise will quiet. I’ll be able to look around again instead of simply looking ahead.

Maybe I’ll reach that gentle water sooner than I expect.

I hope so.

But until then, I’m going to keep paddling.

And if you’re somewhere in the rapids, too, maybe this little corner of the internet can be a place where we pause for a moment and recognize each other.

We may not know each other personally.

I may never know what you’re carrying.

But I see you.

This is hard.

And you are going to be okay.

The Well-Spent Take

You don’t have to find the lesson while you’re still in the rapids. Sometimes the work is simply staying in the boat, trusting yourself, and believing that calmer water will come.

Explore More

If you’re navigating a season of change, uncertainty, or simply trying to find your footing again, these are a few more stories from The Well-Spent Life you may enjoy: