When You Don't Take Care of Yourself

(image from dancesafe.org)

What can I say?  I could have died today.  That's being sort of dramatic, but not really.  I'm a realtor, I went to show a house today.  We're in Texas and it was over a hundred degrees today.  I was in a house with no electricity or AC, I was outside with barely a breeze, and I did this for over an hour.

It's fine if you work outside, if you're a roofer or you're used to being out there.  I'm a lily white air conditioned white girl who makes white girls look like Brazilian natives.  Seriously.  I don't tan, I refract.  Eventually, my skin will cook itself to a pretty rose color.   Eventually.

So I was out there for more than an hour and I brushed off that feeling in the pit of my stomach that maybe I had been outside too long.  As of now, about two hours later, I am sitting in a dark room on my second 16 oz glass of water, and my cheeks are still burning and I still feel hot.  The AC is cranked and I have on my lightest clothes.  This was after the feeling that I was going to chuck everywhere went away. Right now the chills are starting to go away.  Sorry, if that's too graphic. But I'm telling you all this for a reason.

Sometimes, we don't take care of ourselves.  There are so many ways to do it, self-neglect.  We eat too much of the wrong things.  We tell people we're fine when we're far from it.  We listen to depressing music and watch dark things because it matches our mood, instead of seeking out uplifting media.  We give, emotionally, to the wrong people, because surely if we do that, they will appreciate it, or surely they must care just as much as we do, right?  We waste money, sometimes, on helping someone in need, only to become a personal bank for that person for months or years.  We take on too much in work or school or life and we burn out and become unhealthy simply by reason of the great load we carry.

And if we are strong-willed and capable and smart, we raise a hand in the air and say, Hey, no it's okay, I've got it.  No worries.

And I am just now learning how bad this is.  How bad this is to do this to yourself, to tell yourself that you can handle ANYTHING.  It's one thing to be capable and know that you can carry quite a lot.  It's another thing to insist on doing it when you really don't have to.

At some point this evening, I should have stopped everything and said, Hey, listen, guys, it's a bit too hot out here for me.  Let's pick this up again tomorrow.

Why didn't I?

Because I didn't want to disappoint someone.

Isn't that why we do it?  Aren't we afraid we'll disappoint someone?  Aren't we all afraid, at one time or another, of falling short, of showing weakness? And isn't this why we don't take care of ourselves?

I am terribly guilty of this.  Sometimes, I keep investing my time into something that isn't doing much for me, just because I think I have to or I should, or that one day, I'll get a different answer than the one I already got.  Sometimes, I beat myself up because I eat too much, or I eat the wrong things.  Sometimes, I sign up for too much work, because I think if I work a lot, I won't have to think about other things.   Sometimes, I make bad decisions.  We all do.

But what does this tell my children?  That it's okay to impose impossible standards on themselves, at the expense of their health, self-esteem, and emotional wellness?  In the past two weeks I have realized that this entire situation with Logan, while I have written about it, I have also held it close to me like a tight little ball.  And that's wrong.  I am not the only person hurting, or worrying, or hoping.  And I feel bad that I left all those other people out and assumed that no one could possibly be hurting as much as me, because I am his mother...nothing could be further than the truth.

It's important to take care of ourselves.  It's important to be good to ourselves and to recognize that brushing off pain, and sorrow, and telling those lies (No really I'm fine how are you) isn't the right way to go.  We're all children of God, and we're all here, together.  We all need to take care of ourselves, and each other.