Glow by Lady E

Come sit with me for a while. I have my journal open, and tonight I’ve been thinking about something I suspect I do more often than I realize. I turn healing into another thing I need to accomplish. I want to know when I’ll be over something. When I’ll stop thinking about it. When something that hurt will finally stop hurting. When I’ll feel like myself again. And somewhere along the way, healing quietly becomes another deadline. Another invisible date on a calendar. Another thing I can somehow be late for. But maybe healing doesn’t work particularly well under project management. Maybe there are things I will understand quickly and things I’ll have to revisit again and again. Maybe I’ll feel completely fine one day and unexpectedly tender the next. That doesn’t mean I’ve gone backwards. It means I’m still moving through it. I remember one day, many years ago, when I had fibromyalgia. I lived in constant pain. I just couldn’t get a good day. And then one day, in the office...

There are things I say to myself that I would probably never say to another person. Not because they sound particularly terrible. Most of them sound almost harmless. Ordinary, even. But I say them often enough that I’ve started wondering what they’re doing to me. I have so much to do. This is probably the one I say most often. I’ll look around the house, think about work, remember something I haven’t finished, think of three more things while doing something else, and there it is: I have so much to do. For my ADHD brain, this is possibly one of the least helpful things I can say. Because suddenly there isn’t one thing in front of me anymore. There is everything . Everything becomes one enormous, shapeless task hovering over my head. So I’m trying to catch myself when I say it. I don’t have to do everything. I only have to decide what I’m doing now . Then there’s: I’m so tired. Or its more dramatic sibling: I’m so exhausted. Sometimes I really am tired. But I’ve not...