Day 18 – under the weather

Challenges, challenges, challenges. This task I dared myself with is beginning to show its true colours. It asks a lot of me, and I am having a bit of a rough time with it. I am feeling a bit under the weather, if I may say so. For day 18, my last day in the city, I therefore cleared my schedule. No reunions, no challenges, no meetings, no appointments, no to-do lists, nothing. Just a full day for me and my love to enjoy. It will soon be time to say our farewells again after all, and that gets harder and harder. We’ve had a lovely breakfast and my boyfriend nipped my upcoming urge to perform in the bud by suggesting to paint a wall in the flat. You remember my tremendous efforts of the last week , right? I was sceptical at first, the weather was fairly nice, and again, my nagging voices told me to go outside, to do something, to earn and achieve. But then I thought, heck why not. I slept terribly the night before, 5 hours at most, and I felt very tired. I felt too tired, to do anything, let alone, painting a wall. I did what I could and then stepped back, to let my boyfriend do his thing. I even fell asleep once shortly, while sitting on the sofa. Me! Falling asleep whilst sitting somewhere! That never happens. Seriously. It never happens. I am usually the kind of person who’s awake after an 18-hour flight, who’s wide awake on the train, the bus, no matter for how long I’ve been awake before. I am a terrible sleeper. I sleep badly in my own bed. I need it to be dark, quiet and to be absolutely undisturbed, to be able to fall asleep. And even then, I wake up a lot with long periods of being unable to fall asleep again. So, for me to fall asleep in the middle of the day, sitting upright, on the verge of painting a wall, was a very, very clear sign that I needed some rest. This tiredness and the lack of sleep actually slowed me down so much, I didn’t even start to think, I should get my lazy butt up and to do some work. Well, I thought it a bit, specially when I watched the wall getting near completion, but I was too tired to do anything. I am not sure if this shameless display of laziness is actually worth mentioning in the same sentence as the word challenge, but it was challenging-ish to, for the first time, not work to exhaustion or doing something I know would make me feel worse. I comforted the nagging voices by telling them, it was his idea to paint today, after all. I told him, I was tired, right? Right. It didn’t help a lot, but it helped a little. And then I went to bed, to try to sleep for real. Without any luck. Apparently, sitting on a sofa, in the middle of a home improvement, accompanied by chaos, is the way to go, sleep wise. Body, you are silly. Mind, shut up, you also are silly.

We had planned to go for dinner in the evening, to celebrate our three wonderful weeks together and to make the farewell easier. I felt so tired, I was shortly before calling the whole thing off. Hunger prevailed, and off we went. It was a nice evening, even though we never made it to the little wine bar I had spotted close to our flat two weeks ago and wanted to check out before I left. I usually am quite good at telling myself what a sour loser I am, that I had so much more planned to achieve and do. Again, my boyfriend provided a great solution to calm myself down, before I could get lost in my depressing thoughts and self-critique, by reminding me, that I still had a lot of packing to do and that the wine bar will most likely still be there, when I return. He is right, of course. And depression lies. Always. One day I will learn to like myself and to be proud of my achievements. Without the friendly reminders and me half-heartedly agreeing with them.