I have a handful of achievements to celebrate this week. Setting mini goals to achieve in various areas of my life has created greater opportunity for joy. I've talked about achievements in the gym. One was to be able to complete 15 standard burpees in a row. I did that last week. Today I did pistols for the first time on both legs. Pistols are a one-legged squat where, when you stand back up, your other heel can't touch the floor. They are hard. I accidentally did one on my left leg a couple months ago. Today I intentionally did one standard pistol on each leg, then completed my workout with only the modification of holding the toes of the lifted foot on each rep.
But the achievement I'm actually talking about was articulating a personal boundary. Basically, I love holding space for others. I struggle to keep a strong balance by caring for myself. While we had Lili in our house, I felt deeply fulfilled. The joy in supporting her was palpable. It was only after she moved into her own place that I began to feel the strain of having hosted her and baby.
This is not a complaint. This is an observation. I was so happy to have Lili here. But now she's not here and my life has to settle. Lili is very alive. She is social, bubbly and creative. I am quiet, reserved in my bubbliness, and creative. Lili brings out my inner child in a very loving way. But my inner child is not fully healed. She is small and frightened from having been abused. She struggles to trust. And when that aspect of my herstory comes out for a prolonged period, the unresolved issues attached to it do, too.
Those issues include the need for even more silence than my adult self requires. As a girl, the world was an exposed wire and I was always touching it. I was burned and zinging constantly. I could never turn it off. Retreat was necessary. As an adult, I know to put on a rubber glove before touching the world. I've developed many tools to protect myself. But for two delightful weeks, I got to be a kid with Lili (even though she'd just had a baby) without realizing the repercussions. The two weeks since have seen my PTSD response kicking in hard enough that I had to fight to stay awake while driving.
My brain protects me by putting me to sleep. While I'm out, it sorts and processes the experiences I can't safely look directly at. Tuesday arrived and I knew I had to be proactive. I set my alarm for a 20 minute nap on the couch. My daughter was sitting with me, home sick. Two hours later, I wrenched myself out of sleep so I could fulfill the basic requirements of motherhood. I went to bed early that night. And early last night. I'm still exhausted.
In the meantime, I was trying to coordinate laundry and laptop usage and getting together with Lili. I thought I could still support her, but I was wrong. She offered to support me, but that was also not a good option. That may sound odd, but as I shared with my friend, ideally everyone would leave my house for a week and I would spend the entire time home, alone in the closet. Having another body physically in my space when I'm emotionally tapped out is an invitation to the PTS Demons. I can't turn off my physical and emotional awareness when I'm spent. It's like my shields are drained and I feel compelled to do do do for everyone around me.
You can't pour from an empty cup.
I found myself telling Lili I am going into silent mode. This was an awful feeling because I DO NOT want to leave her hanging at this vulnerable time. But the last friend I had that I overextended myself for treated me very, very badly, and even though I trust Lili leaps and bounds and entire fields of wildflowers more (because she has demonstrated she deserves that trust), my anxiety over that former friendship was flaring hard, my inner child was screaming for quiet and I know that when we do not tend to our inner garden, the roots extending to friends and family start to die.
I'm in a time out. I am recuperating. This is hard but a very good thing. And I am so very, very proud of myself for taking this time and space no matter how much I'd rather hold a baby than care for myself. I'm also very grateful to my friend for understanding this is a reflection of my needs, not my feelings toward her. It would be easy for her to feel abandoned and angry. Instead she has accepted me and that allows us to keep up some small communication while I recover. That's a personal record. I've never been able to recover without truly cutting myself off before.
Cheers to personal growth!
What achievements have you unlocked?
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This is a repost.