This semester I upped my credit hours. I am in a marathon race to graduation and the rest of my life. Everything I do seems to be preparation for everything after May. I do not recommend this lifestyle; it is not balanced, and I have found myself being steadily sucked back into the mindset of the competitive over-committed student. This is especially depressing because when I think like a competitive type-A-er I do not become more productive I just begin to hate myself for being unable to keep pace. How sad. I began the semester is such a good mental state. Now I spend Monday through Wednesday panicking until I am too exhausted to do anything including panic on Thursday through Sunday, when the cycle begins again.
Despite the slide back into frantic activity, the year off was not for naught. I have learned many skills to keep the panic at bay. I have learned to pay attention to that overwhelmed feeling. I have learned that I am not trapped; I can say no.
I am in the middle of a fortnight filled to the brim with good things. I love the classes I am taking and the projects I am doing. I love my apartment. I love the friends I am making and the friends I am making time for. I love celebrating birthdays, I love celebrating the upcoming union of two good friends. I have said "Yes" under no compulsion, but out of earnest desires. I am at a buffet of my favorite blessings and I have made myself sick with too many.
Today I had a familiar feeling: entrapment. It brought its friends, lethargy and malaise and they asked me some rounds of questions with which I am already acquainted.
"Why do you have to be in school? Aren't you just starting a long lame life of conformity?"
"How are you going to get everything done?"
"Why aren't you doing anything meaningful right now?"
"You really don't do much- why aren't you better at what you do?"
"Why are you so lazy?"
"Why are you so slow?"
"Why are you so lame?"
"Do you really think life is going to get better soon?"
"Do you really think that you can keep up at this pace? Why are you so naive?"
"Why don't you just find a way out?"
"Why are you such a quitter?"
"Why are you such an ungrateful wretch?"
"What use are you to anyone, anyway?"
"What value can you possibly have?"
"How could anyone really love you?"
These questions come with baseball bats and push me down and down into a cave of discontentment while lethargy winds around me like a python, suffocating my will to live, my will to try, my will to move myself through even the smallest tasks.
Here is the secret that they don't want me or you to know:
I don't need to argue with them. I don't need to have answers or rebuttals to any of these questions at all. In fact, the point of all this crazy thinking is to get me stressed out, loop me into self-investigative self-pity and distract me from the real problem:
I am very tired. I am very low on sleep.
When I am rested and well, my energy and enthusiasm for the tasks at hand cause these thoughts to wither on the vine. Even when I am behind and overwhelmed with school, when I am reasonably rested I have enough energy to problem-solve, reach out for love and affirmation, enough energy to remind myself of the dreams and goals for which I am aiming without exhausting myself further. Sleep keeps my focus sharp to cut off lethargy's coils. Sleep keeps my heart in a state of loving discipline instead of enslaved entrapment. Of course I must do the work of chipping away the foundations that these lies hold in my soul, but this is not work to be done from a place of weariness. I need energy not only for my work but for my play, for self-care, for loving others, for healing and growth.
I am not quitting school again: no, this is a marathon that I am determined to finish. But after a year off, I have learned to listen to myself. When I cannot go on: I don't. A few days of sleep and calm work on long-term projects, unstructured time with my family-- a guilt-free break from the daily toil, and I will be myself again: cheerful in my tasks and grateful for my blessings. Is this self-indulgent? Probably, but so are most of the things that make life worth living. Is this necessary? Absolutely-- willingness to live with the time-out of failure is one of the things that lets me survive.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment