In July, my life was hell.

In a way, it was a long time coming.

Three months before, I moved back to Malaysia after three years of living in Australia. The decision wasn’t easy to make. In fact, I had spent sleepless nights since July 2014 wrestling with the idea.

Adelaide was quiet, peaceful and gorgeous. But I was terribly homesick and felt that my dreams were struggling to be realised there. In the end, I took the leap. I wanted to return to steadier, more familiar grounds in order to seek clarity and direction.

I came back way too fast. Not a great idea. But once I returned, it felt right. I enjoyed being with my friends and family again. Better, I was offered a job before I even hopped into a plane back to KL in May. I felt lucky. Blessed.

But life speeded up very quickly after that. Too quickly.

My new job’s hours were unconventional: I work 4pm to midnight. Always a fussy sleeper, my sleep was affected. At best, I was sleeping five to six hours a day.

Then I had to settle several very messy financial issues. I had to zip from lawyer to bank to insurance company. And if that wasn’t enough, I was also studying part-time; an intense course that demanded at least 10 to 15 hours weekly.

In July, my body said: “Enough. If you don’t want to stop. I will”.

Boy, did it! Rashes erupted on my body in places I wouldn’t t wish upon my greatest enemy. My ears even turned red!

If things were hard before, it became utterly impossible with this illness. I could barely cope with my studies because the constant itch and pain cut my sleep short. All my attention went to finding a solution to my problem, which seemed to puzzle even the specialists. I stopped writing my novel.  Swimming was something I took pleasure in. And even that was taken away because my body was reacting to everything.

It was hell.

Three rounds of antibiotics, five visits to specialists and a few hundred spent on ointments and creams later, a dermatologist narrowed the cause down to eczema and a bad reaction to antibiotics .

Eczema is often stress-related, what do you know!

At first, my reaction to all this was, “This is so unfair! Why me? Why now?” But in the end, I realised that a series choices ended me where I was. Fortunately, I’m almost recovered now. The nightmare that was July taught me these lessons:

Make Health a priority

Often, we pursue our dreams at the expense of our health. But when you’re ill, you can’t pursue what’s important to your soul.

You’re not Supergirl

In hindsight, I could have deferred my course as I had so much on my plate. But I was reluctant to lose the money I had invested in the course. I basically prioritised money over my wellbeing.

Money isn’t everything

So what if you lose a few dollars? Sometimes you need to make yourself a priority, not your piggy bank.

It’s time to be selfish

I also realised that I often make my decisions based on other people’s well-being. It’s time to be selfish and put myself in the No.1 spot.

It is time to change

I now consider it a gift that I fell sick. My body was warning me that I wasn’t doing something right. It was time to reevaluate and make some serious changes.

What about you? Have you reached a breaking point where you realised that things had to change?

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Old comments

Aly
Great post, Liz! I remember feeling this way a few months back. Health is VERY serious–I started having spasms in my back due to the long hours and lifting required in my job, and that turned out to be my breaking point in realizing that my burn-out and complaints about my job were coming not only from a health perspective, but also from the subconscious realization that it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing with my life. The health issues just forced me to confront it and figure it out. And I agree with the ‘selfishness’ bit, though I wouldn’t necessarily call it selfishness. There’s no point in making yourself miserable for the sake of others. Sacrificing for someone else is one thing. Continually throwing yourself under the bus and throwing your vocation out the window to please someone else is something else entirely. At some point we have to love ourselves correctly before we can love others correctly.

Juni Desireé
Love the post, the way you share your story, and the lessons! And I love that last question. There are two breaking points I can think of. One, I wrote about in this post: http://junidesiree.com/2015/08/12/why-i-created-this-blog. For weeks I’d been in a dark place, reached rock bottom, and then got out of it. You’ve prompted me to write about the other one. Thanks! I’ll link back to to this post for the inspiration.

Liz
7 years ago · 0 Likes

Thank you, Juni! Alas, sometimes it takes us reaching a breaking point to make changes. Unfortunately I can be very … er stubborn.I’ve gone through so many ‘valleys’ and yet I don’t make a complete turnaround. Still maybe all we can do is make small turnarounds bit by bit. Keep on doing what you’re doing!

Haley
Sometimes our bodies know things that our minds refuse to acknowledge, and they step in on our behalf. Like you said, this illness may have been a blessing in disguise so that you didn’t continue to push yourself too far and suffer a more serious injury. I’m happy to hear that you are reevaluating some things in your life now. Sometimes self care requires us to be selfish like you said, or say no, or let others down, but your first job is to take care of you. I struggle with this too, I take on too much because I’m a people pleaser. But I’m working on this. Thanks for the reminder to put our health first!

Liz
7 years ago · 0 Likes

Yeah to be honest I’m really clueless about how to do this ‘change your life’ thing. I’m so used to pushing myself so hard that the word resting doesn’t exist for me. God’s message to me, for the longest time, was to rest in him. And I always ask him: Uhm. HOW?

Angela
It was depression for me. That was my breaking point, but like you wrote in the comments, I also didn’t know how to make the change to start healing. I kept doing the harmful things I knew was bad for me. It turned out the answer was inner healing. It was only when I started to heal in mind and spirit that my body started to heal too. I had a major weight gain and constant muscle spasms, but they went away (lost the weight and no spasms) when I started to heal inside. It was a long and hard road, but totally worth it. Self-care is so important and I hope that your road to recovery is going to be a beautiful success. Visiting from the Coffee for Your Heart linkup 

Liz
7 years ago · 0 Likes

Thank you for visiting Angela! (I’m so happy I stumbled on Coffee for Your Heart linkup btw, discovering so many awesome bloggers.) I’m trying to figure out this inner healing thing, but I think a big part of it is to make spirituality No.1 in our lives. God’s wisdom is true: Matthew 6:33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

Sarah Donegan
Yikes that sounds terrible! Yes we need to listen to our bodies and not ignore them until they stop working.Glad it wasn’t worse!

Liz
I’m glad too, believe me! For a while I thought I’ll always have to deal with this. I read horror stories of people who dealt with what I had for years!

Liz

Oh Gosh, Angela, that sounds like a SUPER hard workload. 3-4 jobs? I was already dying with two, and I wasn’t even studying back in Australia! You’re so right. No health. No nothing. i have friends who struggle with health issues and they often tell me how it stands in the way of them doing things they want to do.

Believe it or not, Angela, I don’t even know how to take care of my health! haha. I know I have to eat better, exercise etc, but for some reason I keep just doing the same things over and over again. Puzzling! But I’m taking small steps towards the right direction this time. This health scare was frightening enough for me to do that!