it only hurts when I compare it to how I ‘should’ be feeling, or how I ‘used’ to feel, when I get the question, “so, what are you doing now?” “What do you do for fun?”
It only feels weird when two different neighbors are having parties and I can’t seem to get myself to either, even though I told myself that I wanted to go. It’s 9’clock and I’m starting my second Netflix movie. I guess I didn’t want to go after all. I’ll have to avoid them for a few days so they don’t ask where I was. It’s just as weird to explain that I wasn’t feeling well. The look of pity, or more like fear shows up on their face. phew, I’m glad I’m not her.
But here’s the crazy secret, though I have zero energy for most things I used to do in my life, what everyone else does on a regular basis, when something comes along that I do want to do – regardless of how I feel – like magic the energy shows up in spades. I jump in, drive as much as I need to, stay out as late as possible, whatever, it doesn’t slow me down. And I have a great time! The illness moves, takes a back seat to allow me to enjoy myself
It’s just now there aren’t that many things that light me up. Dinner and a movie with a select group of friends, ceremony, prison, retreat, walks in the woods with Maggie. That’s about it. The rest I simply can’t be bothered with right now.
It only bothers me when I feel I ‘should’ want to go. Or I ‘should’ be more social, or I think I am social and I’m missing something. In these moments is when I forget that I have, time and time again, gone out because of these beliefs and have been SORELY disappointed.
So actually, my illness is simply a blessing that allows me to stay in, to retreat, to rest in a world that doesn’t hold these things in high esteem. It is a gift that is giving me the time to heal from all of the frenetic insanity that was my life before. It is a gift that shows me that the peace and well being that I was so longing for is right here, in this place that unless forced to by illness, I would have Never ventured. You would not have caught me dead living a quite, semi-solitary life as an introvert. I would have died first. Well, lucky I only ‘almost’ had to die a few times before I caught on to the trick.
All that energy and movement, all that striving and extroversion, all that pushing and stressing, agonizing, exhausting existence wasn’t living, wasn’t growing or ‘winning’, it was violence, violence against body and my spirit. It was hell. I wasn’t killing myself, I was already dead.
This place I find myself in now, this ‘illness’ that reminds me I need 9 hours of sleep a night, the sensitivity that keeps me away from high energy places with lots of people, this exhaustion that makes me unfit to work a 40 hour week for someone else. It pushes me to spend my energy only on things that are important to me, that feed me. It doesn’t let anything or anyone drain me.
It’s allowed me to heal my blown out nervous system, it’s allowed me to ‘hear’ what my heart truly wants over the din of my deluded brain, it’s allowed me to enjoy long walks in the woods and actually enjoy it without worrying how many calories I’m burning, it’s allowed me to find reality, it’s allowed me to see beauty and God everywhere, in e v e r y t h i n g. Every single thing, to finally see and appreciate every thing I’ve missed by ‘feeling good’ by being energized, by trying to ‘be somebody’
This illness is allowing me to be well for the first time in my life.
wordstopaige 