I am so exhausted. I keep coming back to this place where I am just intensely tired. I’m still sick, and now sound somewhat like a 13 year old boy going through puberty. It’s hot. Trust me.

I’m so drained that I don’t even know how much I can write today. You know those days where you wake up and you just have nothing? You’re completely empty. I’m empty today. Very, very empty.

I keep coming up against this emotional wall that I’m still trying to process. I’ll probably write more about it next week when I’m more able to put things into words. For today, I’m struggling with my desire to do a million things and my body’s desire for rest.

Taking care of myself

We all know by now how abysmal I am at taking care of myself. I have this fear that if I’m not working 12-13 hours a day, all day, every day, my business will fall apart, and I will never make any money, and everyone will forget I’m alive.

It’s completely irrelevent that I get nothing productive done. Half the time, it’s just busy work. It’s just this whole construct that my mind has cleverly created to keep me from doing the one thing that I probably need to do the most – spend time with myself. Spend time listening to myself. Why do you think I’m sick again?

It’s my body’s version of frantically jumping up and down and waving its arms madly in the air trying to get me to notice that it’s trying to tell me something. And all I can do is murmur absentmindedly, “Yes, yes body I know, but later, okay?”

Disappearing

For months, I’ve had this overwhelming urge to disappear off by myself for a week. I want to go on a retreat, somewhere where there is no work, and I am forced to face myself and listen to myself. Again and again I keep coming back to this feeling of needing to be alone.

At the same time, I’m too terrified to actually do it. I give myself excuses like, where would I go? What would I do? How could I possibly afford to do something like that? I give myself excuses  upon excuses as to why I can’t go away and be by myself for a week.

What good would it do? I say to myself. It wouldn’t change anything. But I know that’s a lie. It’d probably change a whole lot.

Big fat wall

There’s a gigantic wall between me and the life that I want. It’s been there a very long time. It’s a friendly wall. It’s a wall that loves me. But it won’t let me do a lot of stuff.

That wall is starting to show some chinks, but it’s going to need to be taken down before I’ll ever move forward with my life; before I ever shift to a state of mind where I can slow down, pay attention to myself and take care of myself. I’m constantly running up against this wall, bashing my head against it and then trying to pretend that it isn’t there.

Even talking about this wall is making me upset. As I type, my breath is getting shallower and faster. I keep coughing and my stomach is full of butterflies.

This is it. This is the big thing. This is the nameless pain.

And until I’m able to face it, see it, accept it, I’m stuck. I am stuck in the biggest stuck there ever was. It controls everything. It stops everything. And because it’s subconscious I can fight it as much as I want, but it’s a losing fight.

Every day I inch closer to the truth. Every day I shuffle a little bit nearer to that hollow pain.

Every day, the panic rises.

This is the big hard. This is the thing that I have so much trouble naming, talking about, processing, everything. Occasionally, I touch on it, but I mostly pay attention to it’s symptoms – money problems, unable to take care of myself, lack of focus, procrastination. All the little things, the outside stuff.

Sometimes, you need to look a little deeper, dig a little further, be a little braver.

Baby steps, I remind myself. Baby steps.