Exhaustion, Peace, and Other Thoughts Swirling In My Head
The secret that no one will tell you is that changing your life will in many ways exhaust you.
I’m burnt out. From what exactly? I can’t really put a finger on it, but I know that these days if I don’t get 7-8 hours of sleep, I feel decrepit. And today, unfortunately is a day of feeling decrepit. I only slept 6 hours, the next door neighbors have construction going on, and I had to watch Vanessa Lachey interview all the Love Is Blind cast in a terrible fashion last night. To add insult to injury, I just learned earlier today that we have another hashtag going around to get justice for the shooting of 16 year old Ralph Yarl, who was shot in Kansas City a few days ago for knocking on the wrong door when going to pick up his siblings.
Tired is not a strong enough word to express the fatigue that courses through my body. Exhaustion feels closer, but still not strong enough. Recently, I had a flashback to an early memory in high school and I wonder if any of you had a similar assignment to the one I had. One family weekend (remember I went to boarding school) all of us had to present to our parents a poster board project. It was basically a collage that was meant to show everyone what we aspired to be when we grow up. In my class some girls aspired to be doctors or lawyers or whatever very ambitious folks aspire to be. My poster was a teal color (why do I remember this detail?) and the theme was low-key me being a stay at home wife (lol). When I presented I spoke about having a family, cooking, and just being at peace. It paled in comparison to my peers and understandably so, some people wondered if I understood the assignment. In the years that followed, I became more “traditionally” ambitious and forgot about that project.
Yet, in an almost random way, this project resurfaced itself in my mind and I think it’s because for the past 1.5 yrs I’ve prioritized peace and my home life. I’ve been focused on routines and establishing structure. I’ve been learning to trust myself, that I go to bed when I say I will, that I will move my body everyday, and that I nourish my body when I say I will. I’ve learned (again) that my body loves sleep, adores mornings, and likes feeling challenged. I’ve learned that I am reliable and, unlike the things I’ve heard about myself over the past years, I’ve realized that I’ve been neglecting myself for a long time.
I’d like to think that 14 year old me was intuitive and knew that the peace and happiness she wanted for me was something that would take intention. That it did require aspiration and hard work. That it wasn’t a given to be happy and peaceful with a family at home. Younger me knew I would have to work hard to be at peace, and that despite some thinking I didn’t understand the assignment, I truly did. Because without younger me realizing it, I was somehow aware that most of the people around me or that I grew up with weren’t fully at peace. And I can look back with certainty now and see that I was more aware than I thought myself to be. That to me, working hard in the sense of a job or a career was a given. I knew hard work and saw the women in my family work their asses off to provide. Hard work wasn’t something I aspired to, it was already in me, already part of who I believed myself to be. I worked hard to get to high school, college, a career after college. I worked hard to provide for myself and at times others. And in all that working hard, I forwent peace, I put happiness on the back burner, and pushed down my deep need for creativity.
In the past year or so, I’ve learned that in the quest for peace, you see all the parts of yourself you neglected. It’s like realizing all your indoor plants desperately need water and sunlight for the first time. You see the parts of yourself that you haven’t watered and realize that praising your tenacity or your will to live is not the same as living. What does it mean to be a plant that doesn’t have to struggle to reach light, or retain all its water because it doesn’t know when the next supply is coming? What does it mean to not be in survival mode?
As a black woman, I am not sure I will ever fully know what it means to not be in survival mode in it’s entirety. Case and point being the fact that Ralph Yarl is critically wounded and hundreds are protesting for justice.
But I can aspire to get closer to peace than I’ve been before. I can organize my days around what my body and mind needs without feeling ashamed about not working hard enough. I can imagine what a world looks like where I work for myself and not be in fear of letting my mind wander to those unforeseen places. I can try to make my own world as peaceful as possible and then share that with others.
The secret that no one will tell you is that changing your life will in many ways exhaust you. Simply because you are not used to it, because you have to wire yourself differently than before. So yes, these days I am fucking exhausted, but I’d like to think that I am getting closer to some version of myself where I work hard in all aspects of my life and I do not deny myself pleasure simply because it doesn’t seem important.
So yeah, I’m trying. I’m working, working out, learning French, taking walks, and baking! I am even embarking (nervously I might add) on a journey to sell my baked goods! Learn more here. I’m thankful for my community and for my curiosity that never seeks to leave me, instead it continually makes me eager to learn more about myself.
Thanks for reading! Byeeeee!