From the couch

I've had to confront the reality that I'm a people pleaser. Not that this is exactly new information, I've really known for, well, ever. I want people to like me and I want people to get along and it causes intense inner turmoil for me if those things don't happen.

Being a pleaser, and a Ph.D. student, and a mom, and a bereaved parent, and a parent of a chronically ill child, and a chronically ill person, and a depressed person, and a person with anxiety and PTSD.... you get the picture. Being a pleaser plus a thousand things that need my attention and energy = exhaustion, exacerbation of depression and anxiety, and a general feeling that I'm always failing.

I'm working on confronting the fact that I'm just not capable like I used to be.

I think I'm not supposed to admit this and damn sure not supposed to accept it. I'm supposed to fight it like hell. I'm supposed to keep pushing and doing all the things and then when I crash and burn I'll be considered a failure.

Honestly, this path is tempting. There's some notion that if I go this direction I've done something I'm supposed to do and somehow proven something.

These thoughts, long stewing in the back of my mind, have been urged to a boil by what seems like nearly back to back illnesses and injuries. I'm supposed to be at work right now, plugging away at my Ph.D. dissertation. Instead, I'm laid up on my couch, unable to do much of anything because every time I move my right hip slides its self right out of the socket and slugs me with so much pain I see stars.

This isn't a random injury either. It hurts a lot more than it usually does this time (which scares me more than a little) but partially dislocating my hip has become par for the course as a person living with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. So has chronic systemic pain, brain fog, and chronic fatigue.

I'm writing because I feel like crap about being stuck on the couch as if I could somehow just try a little harder and not have a long list of ailments. As if my constitution were stronger it would somehow hold my hip in place. I've been trained to view my physical ailments as failures of character.

What I'm grappling with is the fact that my reserves are very shallow. What I'm capable of giving is severely limited and, now, I have to decide what is worth my limited attention. I cannot be all things to all people. I cannot please everyone. I can't even please most everyone.

I need to somehow learn to be ok with this for my own physical and mental health and because if I insist on running myself ragged my husband and children will get nothing but scraps of the person that I can be.

I am writing this all here, putting it into words publically in hopes of cementing this reality in my mind and heart, in hopes of finding the beginning of giving myself permission to partition my resources, to love and like myself and my body, and in hopes of letting someone out there know that they aren't alone.

Me too.

From the couch... Until next time.