Antsy

November 11, 2019

There’s something deeper at play.

Something at an identity level. It’s the only explanation.

I’m having a hard time with rest. I’m having a hard time providing my body with enough rest. I’d like to say that it isn’t my fault, the amount of rest my body needs has ticked way up in the last six to eight weeks. But the truth is, it is my fault. I’m not listening to my body tell me how much rest it needs. And then I’m not providing it.

I think I’m not listening to my body because I don’t believe it. I’m having a hard time believing that my body really needs this much rest. What makes my body so different? Okay, no, I know the answer to that. Two major surgeries and five other life-altering diagnoses make it different. That’s an obvious answer. But I went a long time after my last surgery doing what I wanted, without focusing so much on rest. Well, that’s maybe not as accurate now that I think about it. For the last year I was at home, I did rest a lot. Because I lived at home, I had hours upon hours commuting to and from school for resting. I had two days a week that I would expend energy and then I would rest most of the other five. Sure, I worked, but it wasn’t a 9-5 job. I had a good balance going. But then I had the first year and a half here in DC that I only expended and never rested. And then I did pay for it. I was exhausted and it exacerbated my illnesses and I was in a lot of pain all of the time. I had a lot of side effects.

I have a hard time grasping that rest looks different at different times in my life, that my body looks different at different times in my life and I can’t standardize rest or activity. Even if my body looks the same as it did a couple of years ago, maybe I just wasn’t listening to my body back then, maybe I did need the same amount of rest that I do now but I just didn’t pay attention. Who knows. All I do know is that I can’t assume how much rest my body needs, I just need to listen and respond appropriately. I also need to remember that rest isn’t only reactionary, it’s sometimes proactive. After all, when I go on a road trip, I fill up the gas tank at the start of the trip, even if it’s already halfway full because I want to make sure I make it as far as possible when I have a long road in front of me. This is making sense.

But it runs deeper than that. The kind of rest my body needs is immobility. Which is what gets me the most. If my body required rest in the form of yoga classes every day, at least I’d have some net gain. I’d see positive results, outwardly. But my body, right now, is requiring the kind of rest that is the absence of movement and action. It needs to be supported by a chair or a bed, not its own muscles and effort. So what am I left with? Reading, watching Netflix, scrolling mindlessly through my phone? I need to be doing something in order to not carry around the weight of guilt or self-shame.

But why do I need to be doing something? I had time when I lived at home the couple of years after the brain surgery that I was fine not doing anything. I had no problem sitting on the couch watching tv with my parents or doing a puzzle with my dad or working my way through a stack of books. Why do I now need to be super active and productive and be contributing something to someone somewhere? Is it a product of the environment I’m in? When I lived in Alabama, I didn’t strive to live in DC. I wasn’t working toward a certain place or goal or level, I was just living and doing the thing that was right in front of me. So what changed when I ended up in DC? Is it a product of my personality? I have largely been achievement-based and capability-focused. Is that what I’m focusing on now? Is it a product of any of the number of trauma-fueled feelings driving me? Do I feel I have to justify all of the efforts of the people who saved my life? Is it that I have to constantly work really hard to accomplish and achieve because I can hear the clock that ticks in all of our lives a little louder than most? Am I a cliché?!

There’s something very deep within me that’s fighting my body’s need for rest and I feel like I keep digging to try and draw it out but I keep underestimating its depth and keep coming up empty. I don’t know if the batteries in my flashlight and the water in my water bottle will last for the entirety of the trip that it will take to really get to the center and I feel like stopping. But knowing there’s something down there in that mine and not being able to get to it will drive me mad. I can already feel myself clawing at the walls within trying to rip myself apart if I don’t keep going and I don’t want the walls to collapse in on me while I sit there, so maybe I should stop. Just to rest.

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