journal: a tantrum

Today I threw a full-blown tantrum because I could feel the need to nap, and I didn’t want to go down without a fight. This is not a happy, hopeful post. I was mostly in a funk all day. When I say that things are up and down, this post represents the down. If you’re not up to it, biggest hugs, skip it with my love. xo.

I do so much sleeping lately.

I know, I know– it is my body’s way of healing. I try to make space for that, but the bills are looming, the hip is aching, my body is plumping, and the projects are stacking up.

I’m not worried I’ll run out of food today. I’m worried I’ve run out of use in general, and how do you fill the pantries then?

I’ve always been a useful person and more than a fair share of my identity is wrapped into that. I type quickly and well. I read swiftly and deeply. I can write, in a variety of voices. I can be trusted. I have a memory like a lockbox, sturdy and private. I have a steady but seemingly boundless stream of energy. I can make designs, and websites. I can code. I can listen to long stories and sit with them. I can be the person who makes time to have coffee with their friends.

I mean, all that was true. None of it is true now.

A handful of clots did what 438 days of prison couldn’t, what widowhood didn’t, what post-incarcerated-life tried so hard to do.

They erased me.

And I know that isn’t true in the most literal sense. I’m sitting here, aren’t I? A full human body that loses charge faster than a busted cellphone. A full human body that tips to the right, that can’t stand up on its own.

A shell, I think it’s called.

A shell that checks out of life as much as the body before it reached for life.

Just take a nap, it says.

Just take a nap, everyone says.

A nap instead of living today, and a nap instead of tomorrow, and a nap instead of next year, and a nap instead of this next decade, and when will the pantry run out if that is all I do?

When will friends fall off if I keep missing the events that are shaping their still-full bodies?

When will this nap be the final one? The one where the tiny voice that is still me becomes tired of echoing through an empty place? Will I say goodbye to myself, then? Boom like the waves in a conch? Will I rest then, finally? Set myself in sand?

After all these mountains, will the ocean even take me back?