Before Therapy: A Moment of Honesty

I’m about to go into my therapy session today, and I feel awful.

At the same time, a strange kind of relief has come over me. It’s like a weight has finally been lifted, but the path that led me to that relief was messy. I made mistakes along the way. I damaged connections with people. I mishandled situations. I tried to be everywhere all at once, except in the one place I actually needed to be.

That’s the pattern I’m starting to notice about myself lately. I move fast. I juggle too many things. I think I can keep everything balanced, but in reality, I end up scattered. My attention spreads so thin that I stop being fully present anywhere.

Last night was a perfect example of that.

I was on the phone with my parents, and at the same time I was doing some research work that actually felt productive. I was reading about how piezoelectric elements create movement, trying to really understand the mechanisms behind them. I felt like I was finally getting somewhere with the article I was reading. The information was clicking. The explanation made sense. It felt like I had found a clear path forward for my research.

And then it happened.

I accidentally closed the tab.

Just like that, the page with all that information disappeared.

It was one of those moments where you realize how tired you actually are. My brain had been juggling too much, and I lost something important because I wasn’t paying full attention. That tab had a lot of valuable information in it, and I was just starting to understand it.

Now I have to go back and find it again. I have to recover what I lost. Maybe today I’ll sit down and retrace those steps and rebuild that understanding from the ground up. It’s frustrating, but it’s not the end of the world.

Still, it’s another reminder that I’ve been operating in a state of exhaustion.

Yesterday itself was chaotic.

I had set an alarm reminding me to go to Walgreens to pick up some medication and head back home. That was the plan. But as I was driving toward Walgreens, I realized that I might miss a meeting. So instead of choosing one task and doing it calmly, I decided to do everything at once.

I turned on my personal hotspot and opened the meeting on my laptop. I placed the laptop on a chair near the driver’s seat so I could listen while I was in the drive-thru line. At the same time, I was still on the phone with my parents.

So there I was.

Driving. Listening to a meeting. Talking on the phone. Trying to pick up medication.

All at once.

At some point during that chaos, I tried to drive out into the street. Another car was coming in, and we almost collided. I had to tell them to stop while I backed up.

Instead of simply waiting or adjusting calmly, I made another rushed decision. I thought it would be easier to drive over a small sidewalk hump.

With my old Ford Explorer, that wouldn’t have been a problem. That vehicle was high enough off the ground that those little humps didn’t matter.

But my Nissan Rogue sits lower.

When I drove over that hump, I heard the scrape.

The bottom of my car dragged across the concrete.

For a second I tried to ignore it. I drove forward as if nothing happened, almost pretending the sound wasn’t real. But as I continued driving, the worry started to build. What if I had damaged something underneath the car?

I pulled into a church parking lot nearby to check.

It didn’t look like there was any visible damage, at least not from what I could see in the dark. But it was nighttime, and my phone’s flashlight wasn’t strong enough to give me a full view. So I drove home, still anxious, still replaying the moment in my head.

When I got home, I called my parents again. They stayed on the phone with me while I checked things out as best as I could. Even then, I couldn’t see everything clearly because it was too dark outside.

By the time I went inside the house, the stress had finally caught up with me.

I felt overwhelmed.

I remember asking for medication to calm my nerves. And then I cried a little. Not loudly, not dramatically, just a quiet emotional release. I had worked hard to buy that car with my own money, and the thought that I might have damaged it through carelessness made me feel terrible.

My parents tried to reassure me that everything was okay.

But reassurance doesn’t always fix the feeling.

People often say that we’re human and that humans make mistakes. That we’re flawed and imperfect. I understand that idea, but part of me struggles with it. Being human shouldn’t become an excuse for doing things poorly. I believe we should at least try to do things the right way. We should try to aim for excellence instead of casually excusing our mistakes.

And lately I feel like I’ve been doing both at the same time.

I punish myself internally for small errors, but I also allow myself to move too fast and create situations where those errors happen.

Another source of stress has been friendships.

Recently I reached out to someone I used to know, someone I had cut off before. I thought maybe it was worth trying again, maybe it was worth rebuilding something. They responded once, but after that, there was silence.

That silence affected me more than I expected.

I kept checking my email. I kept thinking about it. I kept wondering what it meant.

Eventually I realized something difficult.

Some friendships just aren’t meant to continue.

Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is let people go and stop forcing connections that no longer exist. It’s disappointing, because part of me wanted things to be different. But holding onto something that isn’t reciprocated only creates more stress.

At some point, you have to protect your peace.

Looking back at everything that happened recently—the research stress, the car incident, the emails, the meetings—I can see a common theme.

I’m tired.

Not just physically tired, but mentally and emotionally drained. I’ve been trying to do too much at once. Instead of slowing down and focusing on what actually matters, I keep adding more pressure to myself.

And when the pressure builds up long enough, something breaks.

Maybe that’s why I’m feeling the way I do today.

As I prepare to go into therapy, I realize that this session might be less about solving problems and more about understanding them. Understanding why I move so fast. Understanding why I punish myself so harshly. Understanding why I try to hold onto things that are already gone.

There are moments when everything feels like it’s falling apart.

But maybe this is also the moment where I start rebuilding.

One step at a time. One decision at a time. One breath at a time.

I’m disappointed in myself for some of the mistakes I’ve made recently. But at the same time, I know I can’t stay stuck in that disappointment forever.

Life keeps moving.

And so do I.