Why Relaxing Feels Impossible

This weekend was a tough one.

Friday morning I woke up exhausted after a 4th night of not sleeping well despite my sleep aids. The dreams have been foggy and heavy and emotional.

I was doing my daily yoga practice and while I was in a twist pose, my mind was distracted for all of a minute. This led me to come out of the pose differently than Adrienne (my instructor) and instantly I felt a lightning bolt of pain in my upper back region. I pulled my arm back down and exclaimed ‘oh no’ over and over again as I finished my practice with caution. By the time I was done my whole left arm and shoulder felt noticeably weaker, a pretty common side effect of a pulled muscle but I wasn’t aware. 

I took the rest of the day easy and a different heel pain that I had been pushing off for days at this point reared it’s ugly head. I’m still not sure what happened but my heel hurt, then my foot hurt, then my ankle hurt, finally peaking on Saturday when my whole left leg felt achey and stiff. By Sunday I was feeling better, my stepmom thinks maybe I was bit by a bug while I was sleeping, but I still don’t know what happened. I’m starting to believe that maybe it was a manifestation of my body SCREAMING at me to relax, and let myself rest.

When I tell y’all I had a breakdown when I got hurt Friday morning, I’m not exaggerating. I wept most of the day, was irritable to be around, felt like a nuisance, was snapping on my husband, and kept saying over and over again that I didn’t want to be off my feet for an extended period of time. 

Every moment of sitting on the couch with no obligation to do anything felt like torture. I didn’t realize why until Sunday morning.

Growing up, I was the parent in the house. From a young age, I was expected to vacuum, do the dishes, do the laundry, keep my room clean, and various other household cares. Mind you, I was never showed how to vacuum, or how to clean, I was just left as a child to figure it out on my own. And GOD FORBID mother had to come and ask me to do it, I was repeatedly told I should just know to do these things. I’ll never forget the humiliation when I was in middle school at a friends house and I was asked to help clean up and sweep the floor. My friends mom snatched the broom from my hand after about 10 minutes and said “what are you doing?! Haven’t you ever swept a floor before?” What this parent didn’t realize was: no I hadn’t, no one had ever shown me how to, and I didn’t have anyone I felt comfortable asking. This was my childhood, taking care of things I was way too young to take care of and figuring out how to do it by my own devices.

It got heavier as I got older. My tip money from my after-school bussing job (which I had to pay off my own fines for cheerleading) was used as my brothers lunch money. When I got my license at 18, I then became responsible for picking up groceries, running my mothers errands, picking her up from dates or when she was too drunk to drive home. I wouldn’t be able to go out with my friends, because I would have to stay home and clean up the house for my mom.

Why as a teenager did I do all of this willingly? Because my mother had been in chronic pain ever since I can remember.

She was in a car accident when I was a little over a year old that left her with degenerative discs in her neck. She suffered with fibroids and abdominal pain that would sometimes confine her to her room all day, worsening as I got older. She needed to have a full hysterectomy that she put off for almost 10 years. My mothers issues were and are real, and so is the chronic pain she faces on a daily basis. But she has also used her status as someone with chronic pain to manipulate and guilt those around her to get her needs met, a hallmark sign of covert narcissism.

By my senior year of high school, my mothers abdominal pain had gotten unbearable. She went to the doctor and found out she had endometriosis in addition to the original problems, and she scheduled another surgery date for early June. In the meantime, there was this unspoken agreement that I would take on all of the household responsibilities, and I willingly did. I missed get togethers with my friends, parties, dates with boys, school functions, so that I could stay home and take care of my mom. I remember one day she started attacking me for not doing the laundry and making her have to ask and I flew off the handle. I screamed that I had been sacrificing my entire life for her, that I had nothing left to give, and that I was the rock in her violent stream. Each lap of her waters would not change my structure, but over time I am slowly eroding away to nothing under her pressure. She didn’t hear me out. She threw her hands up and started laughing to herself like I had just walked into the trap she had laid. It was the first time I’d ever stood up to my mom, and her not hearing was not as important as that fact.

When I got kicked out and left my mothers house at 18 that June (a story for another day), I still showed up at her house one week later at 5am to drive her to her surgery at the VA Hospital. I had gone with her to the consultation a month prior, and we had made these arrangements before all of the drama had occurred between us. I was angry with my mom, and I wasn’t coming home, but I also wasn’t going to leave her hanging. Me, who had just gotten my 3rd job to make ends meet, drove to her house on less than 5 hours of sleep to be met with a barely cracked door, my mother peeking her head out, and stating that she had cancelled the surgery the night before and she didn’t need me, before shutting the door in my face. I was beside myself. 

This behavior would continue right up until I made the decision to go no contact almost 3 years ago. And through all of this time taking care of my mom ‘the victim’, I neglected taking care of me. Worse, I thought it was selfish to take care of me. 

I don’t have a single childhood memory where I remember being coddled when I was sick. No fond moments of snuggles or forehead kisses or back rubs or sweet coos of ‘I hope you feel better’. One memory I do have was when I was about 9 or 10, and I woke up in the middle of the night with the most awful stomach pain. You know, the kind of stomach pain where you know you’re going to throw up eventually but the sensation isn’t there yet. I went to my moms room and told her my stomach was hurting. She took me downstairs and set me up on the couch with some Sprite and crackers, and when I laid down, almost instantly the feeling of throw up came over me. I got up and ran to the bathroom as fast as I could, but it was too late. I threw up everywhere, and pissed is an understatement for how my mom was feeling at the time. The whole memory feels like a fishbowl, I can’t remember what she said in her rage, I blocked it out, but I do hear her shrill voice and I can see clearly the monstrous anger on her face that terrified me to my bones. To this day, I don’t make any noise when I throw up, and multiple people in my life have commented on how odd that is.

With all of this being said, is it any wonder AT ALL that I have a hard time relaxing? Letting myself be cared for? Letting responsibilities fall to the wayside for my health? I was literally programmed to do the exact opposite. 

When this realization came to me during my (gentle) yoga stretch Sunday morning, I burst into tears. These are all events I’ve remembered and been aware of for a long time; the release comes when I witness where these memories live inside of me and how they sabotage me. Getting distracted from the present moment and injuring my physical body by not mindfully moving through my actions, could there have been a bigger analogy the universe could have offered me? I don’t think so.

Immediately I felt freer once I realized why this weekend felt so uncomfortable. And as I finished my yoga and went to the kitchen to make scrambled eggs at my daughter’s request, I burst into tears again.

I didn’t know how to make scrambled eggs for the longest time. In high school, I used to beg my friends to make them for me after sleepovers and they would laugh and tease at what a simple task I couldn’t do. I looked at those eggs cooking that morning and was overcome with emotion.

For one, my heart hurt for the little girl that had to beg her friends to make her eggs because she wasn’t getting real fresh home cooked food ever. For the girl who wasn’t even concerned with learning how to make them because she was just trying to survive from moment to moment.

For two, my heart was overwhelmed with deep DEEP gratitude because here I am in my kitchen, making scrambled eggs for me and my daughter. Such a simple task, yet such a profound piece of evidence that I live a very different life now. And some days when that thought hits me, the joy I feel is indescribable. 

Sitting with these feelings is hard. Facing your traumas is hard. But ignoring them doesn’t make them go away. Don’t be afraid to ask yourself ‘why’ you do what you do, because the changes you want to make lie in the whys behind the behaviors you already have. 

Today is Tuesday, and I called out of work and stayed home. I was feeling tired and the last few nights have been rough for sleep again, so I took a much needed rest day. I felt guilty about it for all of 5 minutes, then all of the lessons I felt from this weekend hit me, and I was proud of making the decision to respect how I was feeling.

Some days I’ll have to push myself, some days I won’t have the option to just stay home. It’s taking advantage of these self care opportunities when they present themselves that makes those challenging days just a little easier. 💕