April Moon day 4: being looked after

[kafj]

The last time I felt completely relaxed was one and a half years ago. Due to a complicated chain of events that I can't now be bothered to go into, I was staying with a university friend and his parents. I was being fed, housed, amused. I slept in a comfortable white-sheeted bed. I walked twenty minutes to work and five minutes to church. Regarding future plans, I'd fallen into the exact job I needed. After a summer of horrible, grinding insecurity, it was bliss. For two weeks I was comprehensively, deliciously, looked after, and I let myself enjoy it.

Have I really not felt relaxed since then? Apparently not. I was moving house, and then I was unpacking, and then I was ill. I've been feeling very well over the past week or so, but it's been the sort of bubbling glowiness that I get when I'm coming out of depression. Wonderful, but not at all relaxing.

I am not very good at looking after myself. When other people look after me it's lovely (depending, of course, on the people), and I am learning how to accept it graciously (again, depending on the people), but - well. It is all very well for me to collapse on the sofa, but first I have to take all the books off it. And the fact that the books got there in the first place, and have remained there, is probably a sign that I should have been looking after myself better. There. It is so very easy for it to become another 'should'.

Comment requests on this post -
I would welcome: general acknowledgement of the trickiness of this question; hearing how you look after yourself; anecdotes about being looked after, whether in a way that you wanted or one that you didn't
I would not welcome: advice; suggestions of things you think I should do; assumptions about my feelings; rhetorical questions beginning 'why don't you...'

Comments

[silveradept]

I tend to contain the problem of not being able to relax by generating lists and portioning them out in daily bites, after which no more work is to be done, except in an emergency basis. It gets a little trickier when there's someone feeding more tasks to the list on a constant basis, so I'm still negotiating that footing of figuring out how to do work and make time for me.

[kafj]

*nodnod*

I'm very good (bad?) at adding things to my own list - I want to work on stopping that.

[silveradept]

Mine is less about adding stuff and more about making sure that it's not a never-ending element - after a certain point, we just have to stop, rest, and play.

[snippy]

Here through network.

How I look after myself: I collapse on the pile of books, if necessary. Mostly my life is a series of habits, that I have enough discipline to follow (sleep, food, meds, physical therapy -- I am recovering from 3 major surgeries in the last 2 years) and as Epictetus wrote, I "Make the best use of what is in [my] power, and take the rest as it happens." I remind myself repeatedly, every day, that I only have to get through today.

The only times I've ever been looked after I was either too depressed to get myself dressed, or too sick/recovering from surgery to do selfcare past going to the bathroom. Despite explicit written instructions on the care I wanted post-surgery my family did not do a very good job of it; I think I'd have been better off in a rehab center.

[kafj]

Welcome, and thank you very much for sharing your experiences.

I like that Epictetus quotation - seems very sensible and balanced.

I hear ya.

[katmcnally]

I love the sound of being looked after. I wish I didn't suck at it.
So happy to hear that your glowiness is returning. x

Re: I hear ya.

[kafj]

I am making it a priority to bring more of it into my life. Though sometimes I feel like I don't know where to start!