I wonder.
All my life, I've been someone deeply concerned with the intellectual side of things. It's a trait common among women of my family. The men, also, but ours is, after all, a chiefly female clan. It's a point of pride. Understanding. Reasoning. Demonstrating keen wit.
But it's a double-edged sword, one that should be handled with great caution. This is something I'm understanding more and more as I move through life. And to think, when I was a little girl, I was so proud of being clever.
I still am.
But now, it's paired with caution.
Being inside my head, I have a strong urge to deny my intuition, my other ways of knowing. For a long long time, I thought conceptualizing was enough. I still sometimes do.
This is something I understand on an intellectual level. It's by now heavily observed that people who have a hard time not doing are often the ones who end up the most sick. In other words, being a lazy bastard pays.
Learning to say 'no' pays.
Knowing when to prioritize your own sacred rest, also, pays.
In my head, I know that. We're watching someone dear to us near (most likely) the end. At an unfair age. Hands down one of the strongest women that I will ever know. It's frightening and infuriating beyond belief.
Unfortunately, she is someone who has, habitually, taken on far more than she should. I'm not criticizing. Rather, I recognize in myself the same tendencies. I get why. Like her, I am someone who believes if you are not strong, you're weak. That you need to do. That you can. And that being soft isn't really an option.
It's been a tremendous salvation for her, particularly over the last five years. For me, also, understanding that
Stopping here is not an option.
And yet.
Grateful as I am for this spirit of resilience, for this drive to keep doing, to fight, to rage, to be, I begin to notice, also, the way it frays you at the edges. Exposes you to disease. I've written here before about the inner tyrant. That's the one that says you need to always be doing. To say yes. Do for others. Help others. Make yourself useful. And feel a deep sense of shame when you can't because you failed.
I spent most of today wrestling with the inner tyrant. It's not often that the conflict is this clear, but today, it was. As soon as I woke up, I knew as clear as day that my body right now needs to rest. That it is asking to cease activity. To be given a break from the constant to-ing and fro-ing I habitually subject it to. There's always things needing to be done, chores, niceties, ways to help or at least pe productive. Else, there is shame. A sense of uselessness I don't know how to handle.
And all the while, this person's situation quite heavy on my mind today. I kept thinking. Rationally, of course. Intellectualizing it, most likely because the grief that accompanies this particular inevitable is something I don't know how to deal with and that frightens me to my core.
I kept thinking, perhaps if she had allowed herself more rest, we wouldn't be in this situation.
She did quite literally until her body refused to do anymore. It had nothing left to give. It had reached the bottom of the barrel.
I'm rational enough to be aware of the irony, of course. Not one to be impressed by my easy wit, my body must have noticed I understood irony, but still felt the need to highlight it. With every minute, it seems to say
When I don't know when to stop, my body typically pulls the emergency brake for me. And while I understand, in my head, that I am currently repeating a pattern and that I don't learn how to manage this inner tyrant, I will share this sad fate, I'm failing to integrate this understanding. Failing to act on it, or give rest where it's owed.
How do I do that?
I thought this might a community understanding of what I am trying to say by this. I hope I didn't break any rules or commit, unwittingly, a faux-pas by posting here.
