dispatch from collapse: 10 minutes of rest
i went to the grocery store this morning. it’s the first time i’ve left the house since saturday morning. because a thing you don’t consider when you come home, unable to go to work for an extended period of time, is how much more food you’re gonna need in your house??
grocery shopping tired me out and i’m trying to learn about pacing and energy envelopes and planned rest from the community of people who have ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome). so after we put the groceries away, i settled into the recliner in the office and set a timer for 10 minutes. 10 minutes of eyes closed, cozy in the chair, planned rest. i was going to set the timer for 15 minutes but knew i could barely sit still without distraction for 5 minutes.
i lasted about 6 minutes before i checked my phone. and do you know what came up in my head during those first six minutes? my job. wondering about my job. debating if i should check my email. questions that i should get answered about minutia at work. how fucking miserable is that? it’s like even though i -know- that i’m off work, my body doesn’t *know* that i’m off work. today is day 5 of my official short-term disability leave and there’s still a subtle hum running in the background.
this internal call to Do More is happening underneath all the other layers of attention and sensory input all the time and not just about formal work stuff. yesterday, i found myself making a list of things i hope to get done during my time off (fuck i just want to cuss myself out for this). this past weekend, i started trying to plan a winter camping trip i want to do while i’m off. i notice the draw to clean a little more, tidy up a little more, contribute to my community a little more even as i also haven’t showered in 6 days and cried when my partner told me a friend would be stopping by and i would have to interact with her because the idea of social interaction sounds so draining. clearly i’ve got a fucking reckoning to sort out internally.
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earlier in january (pre-pants shitting collapse) i had been listening to the Nagoski sisters’ book Burnout on completing the stress cycle (highly recommend, by the way). i’m realizing today that the somatic hum in my body- sort of like how you can always hear your furnace running in the background noise of your house- is, probably, years and years of uncompleted stress cycles related to work. it’s not that i think 4.5 days of watching Supernatural, stretching, and napping would be or should be enough to clear out all that work stress, but i notice and am still surprised by the impact of work pressure in the depths of my body.
it occurred to me during those agonizingly long 10 minutes where I had no phone to scroll, no books to read, no one to talk to, and not even a meditation to focus on, that there is a part of my body- my sympathetic nervous system- that has been made to feel unsafe by the chronic demands of work. intellectually, i don’t feel unsafe and, arguably, it sounds ridiculous and even dangerous to throw around the idea of “unsafety” so loosely. but my body’s autonomic responses to stressors don’t know the difference between “real” threats and perceived ones. feeling trapped by pressures to work when my body has been deteriorating for years is, perhaps, a much deeper wound than i had realized. i’ll have to unpack that more.
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my brain is just swirling with thoughts about safety, disability, Long Covid versus ME/CFS, scarcity, abundance, productivity, intuition, and purpose. i’m not sure how to organize all those thoughts and i don’t think i’m going to spend my preciously small amount of energy trying to. i just know that part of this burgeoning writing practice is like spring cleaning for my brain and body. so. if you’re reading this, this is your fair warning. //
i can be found ranting on Twitter @colocha_rachel. you can see my dogs and my houseplants on Instagram @colocha_rachel.
