On 1st January 2023 The Bloke and I sat on an enormous couch in a suite in a nice hotel. We were surrounded by our favourite snacks and were watching a film while talking about our hopes and expectations for the coming year.

“It’s going to be amazing, I can feel it,” I remember saying, and at the time, I believed it. After the world shut down in 2020 things had plummeted, and 2021 had been tough, so had 2022. Surely 2023 couldn’t get any worse, could it?

As it turns out, yes it could. 

My mum spent the first four months of the year in and out of hospital. Due to the NHS crisis and lack of beds, something that could have been treated with a minor op, intravenous antibiotics and fluids and a week of rest was allowed to develop to the point where she she had to undergo several procedures, have endless rounds of antibiotics (I think the final total was about 17) and was eventually hospitalised for several days following the operation that she should have been given months before. This was terrifying, and made even more challenging by the fact that I live a hundred miles away, I don’t drive, I work for myself, my mum doesn’t have the internet, so there were many moments of standing outside the hospital or my mum’s house attempting to send out client posts in the freezing cold and rain while she was sleeping or undergoing a procedure. Thankfully, she is almost fully recovered and is now back at work, but it was the first time I’ve ever had to consider her mortality, and it was horrifying. 

In the middle of this, The Bloke’s auntie (father’s sister) passed away. It wasn’t unexpected, but she was his father’s last surviving sibling, following the death of his uncle (father’s brother) just before Christmas last year. I felt for him – in the years that we have been together he has lost both his parents, two aunties and an uncle on his fathers side and his lifelong best friend – and while on the surface he can mask his feelings and compartmentalise while dealing with the immediate logistics, I know how painful it has been for him.  

And then my father died at the beginning of July and with it followed a whole bunch of nonsense that I didn’t initially anticipate. 

Of course, there have been some fantastic moments – The Bloke and I ticked off a musical bucket list item by watching Elton John in concert, we’ve seen some fun shows at the theatre, saw Tim Minchin in a one-off performance, took a short weekend trip to Blackpool so we could be by the coast for a little while, attended a street food festival in the enormous park nearby, and I’ve travelled down to London on a few occasions for client conferences and a touristy weekend with mum when she was feeling better. 

But it’s been tough, and I find myself starting the second half of the year feeling physically and mentally exhausted. My body and brain is screaming for a holiday, and the chaos of the last six months has made me start to reevaluate things on a deeper level:

My work has become all-consuming. I’m lucky in that I work with fantastic clients who I have established very positive and successful long-term relationships with, but the fear that surrounds self-employment has led me to take on tasks and work extra hours for some that are not part of our contracts nor am I being paid extra for. It is also difficult to concentrate at times because I work from home, and am constantly surrounded by noise (workmen, next door’s toddler who screams ALL DAY, EVERY DAY) and repeated interruptions from delivery drivers who know I’m at home and try and leave packages for half of the street. 

I am naturally a people-pleaser, and because of this have found myself in many situations over the last few months where I have been inconvenienced and had my daily working life interrupted doing other people ‘favours’ – predominantly because many of those in my personal life don’t view what I do as an actual job. This is entirely my fault – something that I have done once as a favour has immediately evolved into becoming an expectation – and I have clearly been completely ineffective at asserting myself when I say no. In some instances after saying no, I’ve been asked repeatedly so many times (“what about if you…” “well if I do this, could you just…”) that I have just given in and done it in the hopes of getting them to leave me alone for a while, but it doesn’t seem to work. It’s never enough – I do what someone wants me to do, and a week later I’m getting “Can you…?” and it always results in feelings of resentment and frustration, particularly in the fact that it isn’t often reciprocated on the rare occasions where I have needed help myself. 

I am not looking after myself. I started with peri-menopausal symptoms about five years ago which hasn’t helped with my hormonal state and sleeping patterns, but on a day-to-day basis there is little effort made to improve my physical and mental wellbeing. It’s a daily cycle of existence rather than living, to the point where even things that should be fun become added to the list of ‘stuff I need to do,’ rather than things to look forward to. I accept that there may be a level of depression in this – I had a particularly bad episode for about a week in March where I struggled to get out of bed – but even on days where I feel much more positive, I am weighed down by workload and things I am doing for others. 

I’m angry, frustrated, and tired. I’ve become increasingly negative about everything, and I’m bored of feeling this way. I didn’t work so hard to create a whole new life for myself only to end up being in the same situation, just with different people. I need to make changes. 

So yesterday was the first day of making positive steps to getting my life a bit more on track. I said ‘no’ four times to ‘favours.’ I stood up for myself in a client situation. The Bloke is on annual leave over the next few weeks so we booked a few days away, with the strict instructions that I am going to be allowed to actually rest and not be up at the crack of dawn exploring or spend all day every day walking miles. I arranged to meet a friend who I haven’t seen in ages for lunch next week. I fell asleep at a reasonable hour, and woke up this morning not feeling entirely refreshed, but slightly better. 

One day at a time.