Warning: naughty language ahead!

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Before I flicked the record button up on WhatsApp to record another message to my best friend, my thumb hovered.

What could I possibly say this time that would be any different from all of the hundreds of other messages I’d sent before when the shit had hit the fan?

I thought to myself, I’ll just record my voice and intuitively I’ll know what to say. Well that theory didn’t work. I could hear it in my voice—it quivered and I sounded sad and jaded. This had been the theme for a long while.

I was tired physically and most definitely emotionally, but I was also tired of always being the person who never had their shit together.

“I’m taking a step back,” I said. “I’m always the one who just can’t seem to get their shit together, and you and Lawrence, well you’re both such positive people, you don’t need that kind of low vibration in your lives right now.” It was self-defeatist, self-deprecating, and reeked of playing the victim card. What I meant, and what I felt, was that I was sick and tired of being the one who had another drama, another moment of happiness that was fleeting, and the one who always slid back to a space where, to be honest, I was struggling to give my life meaning.

Just for once, I wanted there to be no storm, no hurricane, no tsunami. I wanted something in my fucking life to just go okay, but it seemed God, or the Universe, had another plan.

Some people say that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. And a friend once told me that if I felt my life was too much to handle, I could talk to him or ask him to back the fuck off. I tried that and it worked a little.

I’m lucky that I have some wonderful people in my life. They’re the stuff of unicorns and would make any Walt Disney film look tame in comparison. They’re out there changing their lives and giving back to others. They’re all about self-development, podcasts, documentaries, audio books, meditation, yoga, fitness, juicing, cleansing, and all that New Age stuff we humans now use to thrive. They’re about saving the planet and, by God, I believe they’re doing it one small step at a time.

But where did I fit into all of this?

I guess I just needed a moment. I needed a support system and a foundation for once in my fucking life, in order for me to do the same and give back to this planet. But my life felt raw, like an open wound, a scab that never quite healed, and I’d always be there picking at it until it bled once more.

Don’t get me wrong; I know my friends have hardships, worries, and concerns, insecurities even. They’re regular people too, but what they appeared to have that I didn’t was a solid foundation. Maybe it was a life partner, a history with people who knew them for decades, a home, a family—regardless, I’d always felt I was missing that piece, that foundation.

Sometimes things have to really fucking fall apart around you. And at the time, it can seem so unfair, like life is being cruel and kicking the absolute shit out of you, but then you realise that it has to fall apart. I compare it to being a child. I don’t know about you, but I always had this desire as a little girl to just tear things apart, like a Lego house for example, in order to find out how to best put it back together and work it out for myself.

Maybe that’s what I’d been doing my whole life.

So what do you do when you feel as if you’re the only one in the universe who hasn’t got their shit together?

First, you acknowledge that we all share that in common. Even those people with the seemingly amazing families and lives have those moments when they feel they’re failing. They feel as if they want to flee and escape. They wonder if they’re a good enough lover, mother, brother, work colleague. You see, we’re all just walking around trying to pretend that we’ve got this, when most of the time we’re so fucking scared that someone will realise we totally don’t.

For me, I realise that in order to get my shit together, I need to fall apart like Humpty Dumpty. I need to break down and unravel. I need to fall into the dark well. But instead of pulling my friends down with me, I choose to stay in solitude. I will climb out of the well myself, and slowly, in my own time.

From this experience, I’ve learned that I need to create my own foundations. Since then, I’ve signed up for yoga classes, downloaded a meditation app, and started sharing my feelings. I allow them out, whether that be in my journal, my teachings, or my writing. I’m doing whatever it takes to be a good mother to the little girl inside of me—my inner child.

My home currently has an issue with mould, but I’m still turning it into my Batwoman cave. I’m making it a place of solitude and being that will help me weather this process. I’ve booked healing sessions and signed up for courses to learn how to be that loving soul that my own soul craves.

And this, my friends, is how I am getting my shit together.

It’s great if you have all of these resources around you, but even if you don’t—or actually even if you do and you still feel as if you’re that person, that one person who never seems to have it all together—know this: life isn’t a race. There’s no prize at the end. The prize is the journey we walk today in this moment. It is the breath that we take into our lungs.

All we have is right now, and if you’ve hit a wall and it’s the hundredth time you’ve done so, then so fucking what. At least you’ve tried, and you’ll keep on trying. Everything happens as it should, so remember that in this moment, all is okay—you are okay.

Keep going, keep the faith, and be the foundation; be the anchor that you need.

Life isn’t about having your shit together—it’s about being Humpty Dumpty and falling off the wall, falling into a thousand pieces, and knowing that you have the patience to piece yourself back together again.

It’s not about Facebook or Instagram, or titles or possessions. It’s not about where you live or how many people love you. It’s about how you feel in your heart when you wake up to live another day, knowing that you’ll keep going, you’ll keep trying, striving, and smiling—even when you feel like you still just haven’t gotten your shit together.

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