Hump Day or, "I can't get behind self-care"
PSA for the day: don't ever look up the handle #humpday on Instagram. It's not what you think.
Or maybe it's exactly what you think?
At any rate, we seem to have found ourselves yet again in the midst of a Wednesday. The clouds and dense humidity here in Virginia will not give it up, but there are still plenty of blessings to count. Clouds mean we can tuck into ourselves a little bit, maybe listen to that podcast we've been putting off in favor of barbecues or read that book we've let get overrun by trips to the pool. Or maybe we make the danged peach crisp already, as I did this afternoon, having run out of excuses not to stand in front of the counter making curlicues from peeled peach skin with juice dripping down to my elbows.
As I sit here now, the kitchen dense with its own, oven-generated, brown-sugar-scented humidity, I can revel in these quiet joys. And, at the same time, I can't help but notice a certain twinge of guilt. This is an underlying guilt I grapple with continually, and that I think we can all relate to--that feeling like you can't enjoy something, not really, because you know while you sit there counting your blessings there is someone somewhere suffering, or overworked, or underpaid, or down and out. Or maybe it's your own, self-generated guilt--that feeling like you don't deserve to enjoy something, because you haven't worked hard enough yet, you haven't hit the moment yet, you can't relax until you get there. Wherever there is.
Who am I, anyway, to sit here on my parents' cushy couch and pretend to preach about self-care? "Drop your worries, take a 2 hour lunch from your job, it's fine, you can stop, the world can wait." No, actually, in too many cases, the world cannot, will not, wait. It's almost laughable, as an option. I certainly can't advocate for that kind of self-care, as much as I wish we all lived in a world where each and every one of us could take 2 hours in the middle of the day for acupuncture and $10 acai bowls (this is neither a knock on acupuncture nor acai bowls; I've never had acupuncture, so I don't even have room to talk there. As far as acai bowls go, I freaking love them, they're delicious. Also, they are in fact $10.)
Y'all I simply can't get behind that kind of self-care. As much as I have indulged in it myself, there is a part of me somewhere that has to call a spade a spade. Or in this case, call out these notions of cushy self-care as merely palliative (which, full transparency, I looked up to make sure I had the definition right, and I think I do: "palliative--relieving pain without dealing with the cause of the condition.")
These days, personally, self-care has to come from an angle that actually feels indicative of some reality I could respect. And that reality I'm trying to reckon with is this: we have to hold it all. We have to feel it all. It's the only thing right now that makes any kind of sense to me. I don't feel like I get to just tune out, or turn off, or check out. I don't really feel like anybody does. As Brene Brown so succinctly put it, "we cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions." So today, I am trying to do just that. I am practicing holding serenity and beauty: a quiet kitchen, a perfectly ripe peach with tender orange skin scented like summer. And, I am practicing feeling pain: the reckoning with racism in this country, with inequity, and specifically these past few days, with the incomprehensible violence of the horrifically calculated stabbing of Nia Wilson, a gorgeous young black woman in Oakland, California.
I don't particularly feel like I'm "good" at any of this yet. On holding the beauty: I forget to say "thank you" before I eat something; I get lost in the world of my phone instead of this glory of a world I've got right in front of me; all the time I hedge to tell people I love them, or admire them, or enjoy their company, for fear of being "too much." Too much.......what, exactly? Too much.....love?? And on holding pain: I shy away from difficult scenarios. I question the validity of my feelings, or the impact of my voice ("who am I??"). My introversion overtakes me and I get insecure, feeling ill-equipped to handle pain.
But I think this is just another one of those things.....I may never get there. I'm even starting to wonder if there is a there at all.
I promise you, this was not what I planned to write today. But it's what's here, this hump day. Thanks for bearing with me in my attempts to get at it all--the contradictions, the complexities, the nuances of who we are and the world we're in.
Check back in soon.
<3
A
Or maybe it's exactly what you think?
At any rate, we seem to have found ourselves yet again in the midst of a Wednesday. The clouds and dense humidity here in Virginia will not give it up, but there are still plenty of blessings to count. Clouds mean we can tuck into ourselves a little bit, maybe listen to that podcast we've been putting off in favor of barbecues or read that book we've let get overrun by trips to the pool. Or maybe we make the danged peach crisp already, as I did this afternoon, having run out of excuses not to stand in front of the counter making curlicues from peeled peach skin with juice dripping down to my elbows.
As I sit here now, the kitchen dense with its own, oven-generated, brown-sugar-scented humidity, I can revel in these quiet joys. And, at the same time, I can't help but notice a certain twinge of guilt. This is an underlying guilt I grapple with continually, and that I think we can all relate to--that feeling like you can't enjoy something, not really, because you know while you sit there counting your blessings there is someone somewhere suffering, or overworked, or underpaid, or down and out. Or maybe it's your own, self-generated guilt--that feeling like you don't deserve to enjoy something, because you haven't worked hard enough yet, you haven't hit the moment yet, you can't relax until you get there. Wherever there is.
Who am I, anyway, to sit here on my parents' cushy couch and pretend to preach about self-care? "Drop your worries, take a 2 hour lunch from your job, it's fine, you can stop, the world can wait." No, actually, in too many cases, the world cannot, will not, wait. It's almost laughable, as an option. I certainly can't advocate for that kind of self-care, as much as I wish we all lived in a world where each and every one of us could take 2 hours in the middle of the day for acupuncture and $10 acai bowls (this is neither a knock on acupuncture nor acai bowls; I've never had acupuncture, so I don't even have room to talk there. As far as acai bowls go, I freaking love them, they're delicious. Also, they are in fact $10.)
Y'all I simply can't get behind that kind of self-care. As much as I have indulged in it myself, there is a part of me somewhere that has to call a spade a spade. Or in this case, call out these notions of cushy self-care as merely palliative (which, full transparency, I looked up to make sure I had the definition right, and I think I do: "palliative--relieving pain without dealing with the cause of the condition.")
These days, personally, self-care has to come from an angle that actually feels indicative of some reality I could respect. And that reality I'm trying to reckon with is this: we have to hold it all. We have to feel it all. It's the only thing right now that makes any kind of sense to me. I don't feel like I get to just tune out, or turn off, or check out. I don't really feel like anybody does. As Brene Brown so succinctly put it, "we cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions." So today, I am trying to do just that. I am practicing holding serenity and beauty: a quiet kitchen, a perfectly ripe peach with tender orange skin scented like summer. And, I am practicing feeling pain: the reckoning with racism in this country, with inequity, and specifically these past few days, with the incomprehensible violence of the horrifically calculated stabbing of Nia Wilson, a gorgeous young black woman in Oakland, California.
I don't particularly feel like I'm "good" at any of this yet. On holding the beauty: I forget to say "thank you" before I eat something; I get lost in the world of my phone instead of this glory of a world I've got right in front of me; all the time I hedge to tell people I love them, or admire them, or enjoy their company, for fear of being "too much." Too much.......what, exactly? Too much.....love?? And on holding pain: I shy away from difficult scenarios. I question the validity of my feelings, or the impact of my voice ("who am I??"). My introversion overtakes me and I get insecure, feeling ill-equipped to handle pain.
But I think this is just another one of those things.....I may never get there. I'm even starting to wonder if there is a there at all.
I promise you, this was not what I planned to write today. But it's what's here, this hump day. Thanks for bearing with me in my attempts to get at it all--the contradictions, the complexities, the nuances of who we are and the world we're in.
Check back in soon.
<3
A
Thank you so much for writing this. <3
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