Uh.
These past two weeks have just been testing me to my limits. Learning how to deal with stress, deadlines, priorities, bosses and editors, to-do lists, homework…I just feel so overwhelmed.
I just feel so robotic and staccato-like, and it all ended up with me never eating properly, never taking the time aside to just ask myself how I'm doing and feeling, and ultimately getting the flu. Those three days, literally feeling my body so weak and so sick, I just thought about how my body should be my temple. My body is the vessel through which my soul gets to live this life and I need to take care of it. I need to take care of the mind that leads this vessel, the stomach that fuels this vessel, the heart that pumps blood…just everything works together. My body was fighting so hard those three days to make me healthy again and all I had to do was lay there. I wanted to help, but I realized the way to help is to make it happy, to live a life worth battling for. I didn't want to be angry, frustrated, stressed, or hungry. What kind of life is that? Already, every breath is a blessing, and here I am angry because my editors made me feel under-appreciated?
Why even get angry…when all I should be is just celebrating the life I am living and the days I get to spend on this earth? And so, Monday, when I was able to finally get out of my bed and see the world outside again, I just plunged headfirst into the work I had missed. I started answering all emails, sending all emails, and reading and catching up on homework. It was 10:00 P.M. when I finished things due the very next day. I walked back to my dorm and suddenly felt something was missing.
Something led me to sit at a table below Redifer Commons, next to a streetlight and apartment buildings and a lawn. I began to observe the people walking by, the way they walked and the way friends talked. I sunk in the laughter I heard, and I looked at the street lamp. I wondered what it would be like to be the glass on that lamp. I wondered what it would be like to be that one strand of grass on that lawn. I wondered just how many people lived out one of their college years in that apartment building.
So much life is happening all around me, and I get so focused on my own and not even enjoying every second…just trying to get things done. But that's not the way to live, I realized. I don't ever want to waste even a second being angry at things I can't control when I can spend my time just loving what's around me. The second kind of feeling—the loving everything— is so much more intoxicating and powerful. I want to figure out how to just feel that connection and ease every day. It's hard when I have so many things on my plate, but just slowing things down and taking it easy… sometimes it's necessary for clarity. And after being so sick, I was so thankful for my body and for how it healed me. I never want to disrespect it by not caring about its needs both mental and physical before I do the needs of my priorities.
My first responsibility should be to myself…and so I think when I think about mystery, I think about the mystery of my body and how strong it is and how I need to care for it and my soul. I feel as if my body is actually this separate entity that just oversees what I do but is impacted in ways I don't even imagine. The clothes I wear on it, the food I feed it, the people I place it by, the people I can choose to let see it in my life…it's all important and these decisions impact it. This sounds so trippy writing this, haha, but I truly feel this mystery and writing this—even though it sounds crazy— I know it's because I'm thinking about what I'm thinking…and my body is finally having a say.
Uh, sounds so insane, but I mean every word. My body needs my attention and my love and my care, and the mystery for me is to feel more connected to it. Again, this flu just taught me so much almost…like on my last day, my brain felt so charged and ready to start work but my body was too weak and too tired and I felt that it needed to sleep. When I'm healthy, I don't listen to my body like that because I'm not forced to. But then I'm not being mentally healthy, you know?
So I want to start being more aware of myself. I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't want my body to be a mystery to myself anymore.
***
I found this letter to myself this week in one of my notebooks. I had taken a day to just write this all out last year. It's amazing, the days and weeks that once felt so intense are now just a faded memory. I hope that from now on, I can always be this vulnerable with myself and others. I hope somehow, in some way, I've inspired you to do the same.