You Can’t Hate Yourself Into Someone You Love, So Why Do I Fight My Own Brain?
What if I approached myself from a place of knowing I am already doing the best I can be, and anything I cannot do right now doesn’t matter? What if I trusted myself to grow without setting a deadline for getting my shit together?
I have been angry, fighting myself lately and stewing over how poorly I’ve been coping with my internal struggles — annoyed with myself for not waking up early enough, not having enough time for myself, and using my time “incorrectly” when I’m not working. After years of mental health struggles, I tell myself that I should be past this — not falling down into a depressive rut like it’s a well, but letting myself sit here instead of having jumped or climbed up and out yet.
“Give yourself the same vulnerability and grace to breathe through this moment as you would with someone you love,” Gabriel, my friend who hosts our weekly queer virtual meditation circle, said gently this morning. I pause and think about how often I hold my friends’ vulnerability and don’t expect them to fight through their grief or pain, and wonder why it’s so much more difficult to give myself the same compassion. Treating yourself like a friend instead of an enemy or competitor to beat at your own life is one of the hardest things.
I do not hold myself to the same standards that I hold the people I love to. I am soft with others. But something difficult happens to me, like someone I love’s almost-suicide, or a trauma anniversary, and I become so burnt out by feeling it all that my body goes into a kind of shock and all of my routines, my capabilities, my ability to feel joy easily tumbles out the window.
When my friends are suffering, I tell them that they deserve to pause. When I am suffering, I am plagued with guilt for allowing myself a moment not to be moving forward, to sit still. “You don’t have to try to be happy or push through this. You can let yourself just feel through everything you’re going through right now,” I say over and over again to a friend dealing with trauma from PTSD. I said it to them just today. There’s nothing actually wrong with sleeping until I absolutely have to get out of bed and start work every day, nor is there anything truly wrong with taking naps in the afternoon instead of pruning my schedule and stocking it with activities.
I’ve been dealing with burnout for months. When I’m not working, my body just wants me to sleep. My creative energy is mostly zapped, and I feel like I’m wasting my time lying in bed when I should be having an adventure or bettering myself. I am scared of being bored by myself. I am scared of staying stuck. I know I need the rest to recharge from coping with my c-PTSD, from working, from piling so many expectations on myself. But I feel boring and stuck, and not like myself at all. I am unmoored, like so many people are right now. Instead of choosing to be kind to myself I am unforgiving, and I have made myself lonelier for it.
I think of books like How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell and my friend Rainesford’s new book, An Ordinary Age, all about breaking down what it actually means to live a fulfilling life and be satisfied with the choices we make with the time we’re given. They embody the understanding that there is no “right” way to spend our time. And I already know that I’d rather focus on living my life constructively than productively. Because productivity is a trap. This week my therapist told me I sound like a dog chasing its tail, always seeking the things that bring me joy — painting, writing poetry, playing music, reading — but never the spontaneity and patience to bask in that joy.
Yet I don’t feel satisfied at all when I’m not building towards something. If I’m not spending my days moving towards a better version of myself, am I living? And what’s wrong with doing what’s needed in the moment to survive?
My anxiety tells me I need to be writing a song, or writing a poem, or working on something, creating anything, carving the hours I occupy into something important or wonderful. Time feels like a hole to be filled, that I am somehow not filling correctly.
When I feel upset if all I have done today is survive, I ask how I can be so proud of the people I love for waking up and breathing each day, and not need anything else from them. I acknowledge the challenges they’ve surmounted just to exist. When I take more than a moment to do the same for myself and think about the hurdles I’ve jumped over, the things I’ve survived even recently as this past year, I am amazed at myself. And yet still so impatient that I am not doing more with my time, impatient that I am the tortoise and not the hare in the race.
It’s corny, but one of the only metaphors I’ve found that helps me put my life into perspective even a little bit is that I can’t judge myself against how well I’m able to stay afloat in the deep end of the pool, wondering why I’m not swimming as effortlessly as people in more shallow water. People do what they can with what they have. I cannot punish myself for my circumstances. I have to float, or swim where I am. And it’s okay to only have the energy to rest—to float—right now. How can I be angry at myself for doing the one thing that helps me replenish my energy to be able to keep moving, keep swimming, keep finding new joys?
In the unusually high heat of a late May afternoon, my body and brain duel. Despite my lack of patience, I give myself permission to lie out on the grass in the shade for a few hours — no goals, no shame in just existing. Acceptance and self-compassion for being able to wake up and live another day at all.
