Getting worse before it gets better

Sometimes life's going downhill right? But it has to get worse before it gets better. We know it, we learn from experience and we learn to accept this matter. There are some events in life that we cannot fully control. Like sneezing when we have a cold. There are however certain things we do have control over. When we realise we're doing badly in our studies, we can study harder or get help. When the food we cook tastes raw, we can cook it a bit longer. When its something simple, we tend not to make the same mistakes over and over again.

Right?

Wrong! In my case, I manage to screw something up so bad even when its gradually done and for some reason I don't stop screwing it up till I've hit rock bottom. Till I'm ready to cry. I baffle myself. I really do. How is it, I can almost step outside of myself, look at things fairly objectively, but then completely FAIL to put any kind of resolution into action. Like even now? What happened to my resolve of going to sleep earlier? So I can get up at human hours... its not the small things I do or fail to do which is bugging me, its what it says about me, about my character. I have no will power. Or rather I haven't learned to use it!

I'm so pathetic that when I do the simplest tasks - laundry, tidying my room, etc. I get so impressed with myself that I somehow think its ok not to do anything more. I am such a coward that I hide from the truth, not afraid just to hear it, but also to reveal it. I'm afraid of the consequence and yet this fear wasn't enough to prevent me from allowing the same events to pass that I'm now afraid to speak of. I know when I speak of allowing things, it sounds like it was in my power. Yes I know that the ultimate power lies with Allah and so whatever is meant to be will be. What I'm condeming is my lack of effort, for surely Allah rewards effort and sincere intentions, both of which I am evidently lacking.

I pray that Allah gives me the strength to not only face, but to conquer the challenges that life brings before me. Its been too many a time that I've failed. In so many ways. I feel very strange. Meaning what I am feeling now is not an emotion I can pinpoint and name. Its something like anxiety, its something like a premonition. Like there is something I should be understanding, something I need to be doing, but I don't know what it is. I don't know what to do.

May Allah grant me some understanding. There is so much I need to do. So much time that I can't make up for. Its hilarious you know, the saying 'making up for lost time'. It shouldn't exist, because there is no such thing. Time once you've lost it, is gone. There's no making up for it. It might not become too late to accomplish the task you set yourself within a given time, but time wasted.... is wasted. And once it goes, we become all too aware of what we could have done with it. How much we could have done, and how much we have lost. How much we don't have a right to complain when we 'don't have enough time'. Perhaps we do have the time, we just deprive ourselves of the barakah within it. Everything that is without Allah's barakah, is insufficient, is unsatisfactory.

Sometimes it is the hardest thing, to go before Allah and ask. Ask for everything good. Everything I know I don't deserve and yet... what is there to gain by remaining silent? Even if I were to 'deserve' something, and Allah alone would be the judge of that, why should it be given if I don't ask. After all is said and done, everything in creation is at Allah's mercy - the righteous as well as the sinners. May Allah have mercy upon us all