Rorschach

I'm really sick. It was inevitable. I keep doing this to myself. Running myself into the ground until my body forces me to stop because I won't stop on my own. Except I couldn't stop this week. I've been sick since Monday, but I've still been trucking along. Because I'm a lunatic.

I did take Tuesday off of work. I woke up Tuesday morning and could barely walk, so I called in sick. Teaching has to be one of the worst jobs to call in sick, because I still had to prepare a lesson plan with my fuzzy brain, all the while knowing that it will pretty much be a waste of a class period anyway because other people aren't as invested as I am in getting the students to learn what they need to learn.

I still had to go to work Tuesday night because literally no on else can do my ACT prep job. To call in sick there is to reschedule and reorganize lots of people, and possibly lose money for the college, so I muscled through Tuesday night, sick. I muscled through Wednesday day, sick. I muscled through Wednesday night, sick. I muscled through today, sick. 

Now I'm finally home. Finally resting. And I feel worse than ever, because I won't...freaking...stop. I don't know what else to do, though. How else do I live? Do I just lie in bed for days and give the finger to the rest of the world? Does it rotate without me? My world doesn't. It falls to pieces, crashes, burns, turns to ashes. I kind of want to let it. I kind of want to go away and make everyone else figure it out because I'm so. very. tired. Part of me knows it would probably be better for the world if I did go away. I'm not suicidal, not even close, but just needing permission to go away. Needing to give myself permission to stop playing Atlas. I know I'm not really as important to the world as I want to believe. People would figure things out. People would be just fine. Maybe that's my problem more than anything. I need to believe I am integral, otherwise, what is the point of me?

I haven't been able to be present emotionally for my kids--or for anyone else--for a while. I haven't had 100% to give to anything for what feels like a long time. I must figure out how to refuel completely, consistently. I keep emptying the dregs in my cup before they can even finish drizzling in. I'm struggling to know what to do or how to fix it.

I can tell my body is purging with this illness. Everything is draining. My body is trying to do what my mind won't do. It's trying to eliminate the waste, the poison, the toxins, the disease. How do I make my mind match it? How do I purge the poison and replenish with the pure? I feel like I've been studying for a final exam for 15 years and now I'm sitting, staring at the test and can't remember anything I've learned.

I can feel myself trying to tell me something. There is something inside of me desperately trying to be heard, but it feels like an echo in a huge cave that keeps repeating over and over. I can hear a voice, but I can't understand what it's saying.

My new therapist has an instagram page. He posted a picture of clouds on it and asked "What do you see?" I've always thought Rorschach tests were a little silly, a little predictable and easily manipulated. But you want to know the first thing I saw in those clouds? I saw the profile of a little girl, with a sad face on her shoulders.

Yikes.

I think that's who is trying to speak to me. I think that little girl is trying to tell me she's sorry for all that has happened to me. She's sorry for all I have to carry alone. She's sorry for the weight, that sad weight, that sits there, ever-constant, that she tries to shrug away and sometimes can forget, but that never truly leaves. She's trying to tell me she needs to be held and loved and truly, completely, accepted. She needs to be forgiven. She needs to be taken care of. She needs to ask for help. She wants me to know it's okay that she needs these things. But I don't yet know or can't remember how to hear her or how to help her.

I'm trying to hear her. I'll keep trying because she needs to be heard. She needs to be rescued. That's what I do. I'm a rescuer. I'm a fixer. But I don't know how to rescue myself.