Whew

I said NO yesterday, and I meant Yes. I guess I am still working on this No/Yes conundrum. I will get it right soon and luckily, I righted my wrong reasonably quickly. 

The responses from last week’s blog were interesting and made me think. Seems many thought I was sad. I was not sad, I was fascinated, disappointed, intrigued, and introspective. It started with my noticing how tired I was and with seemingly no reason. There had been no heavy lifting, no running, truly nothing aerobic at all. There was nothing on the surface that was enervating either. But I was exhausted and inert.

So, my solution was to write about it. I find that writing about things makes me think more and somehow brings the unconscious conscious which is always a win in my book. As my fingers moved over the keys, it was revealed that I was down the codependent rabbit hole yet again. Surprising and not surprising. Neither good nor bad. Just was. It was the realization that I had made a series of decisions over a several day time period that were not awful or tedious, but simply not what I wanted. I made them to accommodate others and the accumulative aspect knocked me for a loop.  But why so tired?

Then it dawned on me. I have been out of the full-time caregiving roll for a couple of months.  People have been taking care of me (which I must admit is quite lovely). It was as if I had been on an extended holiday. I had hit the ground running, going back into old habits and I had no idea the toll it takes.

First was the thought that I had never noticed how truly exhausted I was from the past few years and certainly the last four months. So how could I have ever realized the drain of taking care of other people at the same time as well? I was already spent so why not a bit more. I was tired because I was out of practice. This seemed to satisfy me briefly, but then I dove down to look for more.

As someone who has considered the rest of the world before herself for most of her life, how could I know the toll it was taking? It was my normal and an expectation. My mother’s voice in my head, “It doesn’t hurt you to ______”.....fill in the blank. I had over the years said to her, “How do you know it doesn’t hurt me?”  Then we would laugh it off and I would go about performing the tasks she suggested along with all the other ones I sought out on my own. None of them did hurt me, but they were exhausting in their breadth and scope.

Except I did not know how tiring until last week. I had never taken two months off before. I had never reached the end of the marathon and been forced to sit down and rest.  I had never not had someone or something to care about or do.

Grateful is not a big enough word to cover how I feel about my realization. And do not worry about me or think I am sad or lonely. I have found someone new to take care of and it is me.