Rest is Necessary; Rest is not the Enemy

All Photos from February 16, 2016--Our First Beach Day
 Lots of Fun With My New Camera

A little over a week ago, I found myself completely exhausted and not feeling well. 

I woke up, ate lunch, and went back to sleep on the sofa for the afternoon.

The past week has been incredibly difficult and emotional. Tears have streamed down my face every day, usually multiple times a day. 

I had NO idea that going from illness to wellness would be such a difficult process, so emotionally charged, so filled with remaining grief, new anger, resentment and frustration, and overwhelmingly difficult decisions.

As I readied myself to settle onto the sofa--taking off the back cushions, getting some pillows from the bedroom, gathering a couple of blankets, turning on some classical music, settling in and then asking Mom to help me by getting the heating pad because I couldn't get warm, and corralling the puppies to snuggle with me-- all I could think about was how needing to rest like this and needing to ask Mom to bring me stuff could only mean one thing: I must be really, really sick. I must be relapsing. I must be going backwards. 

This leads to an instinctive reaction to feel fear that I will go back to being sick the way I was before. That I will go back to feeling lousy every day. That I'm not really getting as much better as I thought I was.

When I have a setback, the anxiety that surrounds it is almost worse than the physical setback itself. This week hasn't been fun, and I've felt pretty lousy. The fatigue, the crappy sleep, the fogginess are all reminders of 'how it used to be'. It's just that they aren't nearly as extreme.

But in my head, needing to rest like this is super duper scary.

When I landed at counseling on Thursday, I had already spent over an hour crying to Mom, and spent an hour more crying to Evelyn. The tears haven't stopped.

I came away from my session with a lot of insight, and a much better understanding of why I feel the way I feel, but the biggest thing I need to recognize and change on a cognitive level is:

REST IS NECESSARY.

REST IS NOT THE ENEMY.

I can choose activities to remove in order to 'downsize' my life, which has gotten too big for what I can physically manage but on a deeper level I need to change my perception of rest.

My memories of rest are of time FORCED to do nothing but rest because my body could not do anything else. Rest was not a choice, it was almost more of a punishment.

And 'rest' is something that's very very difficult to do when you are sick and tired of it and when your body feels too sick to really go into a state of rest. "Rest" is more about passing the time as quietly as possible, sometimes suffering minute by minute, unable to become distracted by the severity of the forceful heartbeats, racing heart, throbbing pain, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, fogginess, ringing in the ears, chills, shakes, sweats and malaise.

Rest means being stuck on the sofa, too sick to get my own things that I need or stuck in bed while the rest of the world is enjoying the fresh spring air.

Rest means something is wrong. Very wrong.

Rest, over the course of my illness, did not mean a nice relaxing day reading a book and snuggling with he puppies, sitting outside and sipping a cup of tea, or whatever we might associate with rest, recuperation, and rejuvenation.

Rest is hard work.

A couple of months ago, I decided to stop napping in my bed and nap in the recliner in the den. In my sickest days,  I spent hours, days, weeks in that spot. After my gallbladder surgery, Mom found me in that recliner unconscious, having thrown up all over myself and needing to call 9-1-1.

Resting and the associations I have with it are traumatic. They are not serene.

It took me a while to re-frame that being in that recliner could be a safe space.

As I've started to feel better, and especially as I've worked to create a meaningful relationship with a significant other, I've given up a lot of rest time. I figured I didn't need to take a long bath every evening, watch some TV, and listen to a book. 

Those were things the *sick* Emily did, not the new, more well Emily.

Since my energy was better, I didn't think I needed to make time for rest anymore. I mean, if I'm not as tired, I should use my energy to do something. Why 'waste' time resting?

Most of us, sick or not, have a pretty difficult time making time for rest in this busy world.

But for me it comes with an extra layer of anxiety and stress. It's scary. It's the enemy.

In reality, it's absolutely necessary.

I can't keep up the pace I've been trying to maintain since my health has been improving. If I try, my body is going to come back screaming at me, bringing upon me the forced rest I hate so much: Afternoons on the sofa, crashed out, too sick to do anything else.

Thankfully, the crash is NOTHING like I used to know--I was truly able to rest that Saturday. I slept peacefully and without pain or forceful heartbeats.

This week has been hard and disappointing. But it's nothing like the crashes of the past.

In order to give my body what in needs in terms of rest, I'll have to make different choices. I'll have to give up some of the things I had been saying yes to in favor of time at home watching a movie, taking a long bath, listening to a book, or whatever it is that I find I need.

And every time I settle in to try to rest, I need to quiet the anxiety that so readily surfaces telling me that rest is the enemy and that rest is scary.

We all need rest. Some of us just need more than others.

Rest--true restful restorative rest--is necessary.

If you find I've become a little more quiet, a little less present than I was before, you just might find out that I've been making time for something necessary: REST.

Blessings,

Emily