Lay your burdens down (and whine a little)

The strange freedom in wallowing

Days of despair are forbidden, are they not?

There is no marketing language in me today. No useful clicking of buttons. No Instagram posts. No article pitches to editors. No phone calls.

I do not care. The endless tasks upon tasks weigh heavy. But I leave them. I lie still in the quiet and watch trees flutter against grey, seeing nothing.

I am nothing.

[loud groan ensues, nearby]

Oh stop judging.

(Wait, who’s there?)

-Me. The relentless, list-keeper, goal-setter, goal-getter. Remember her?

You know it’s only human to have these kinds of days now and again, don’t you?

-But what about using some purposeful practices to make you feel better?

What if feeling better isn’t always the point?

-Um, WTF.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But listen, you’ve been taught that there’s a right way to be and a wrong way. A right way to feel and a wrong way.

-Could you smile when you’re talking to me?

My point exactly.

-Well, you look better when you smile. And don’t they say you feel better when you smile, too?

Sure, I guess “they” do say that. Look, I know there’s that whole brain thing your mind does where the smile works in reverse and triggers you to feel better. I am aware. But what if I want to be here for just a minute? It’s exhausting to try and move. A moment in the grey is peaceful. In here, I have no limits. I don’t care anymore, so all of a sudden I’m not trying to do something, I just am. I like just am. It’s like floating. I’m free.

-Just don’t admit any of this to anybody. You don’t want them to know how weak you are. Can’t hack your life. And you don’t even have kids…

That’s not what I said. I am hacking my life just fine, thanks. This is my life, actually. This day. This part of it. And it’s a part of “theirs” too. Mine skin is easily punctured, as is theirs. My bones break, as do theirs. My time here is slowly ticking away. So is theirs.

So no, I don’t have a problem. I just want my moment to breathe. And I am not alone. I am human.

-Um, that’s not what your LinkedIn is trying to show…

Cute. But you know what, even the super-humans have days like this. You know how I know? I’ve talked to those bionic bright-and-shinies—

-You mean, your friends?

Yeah, them. I’ve talked to them on their hard days too. And they are just like the rest of us. You know that my friend, Mrs Dartmouth-to-Yale-Law, now COO, married to Mr Princeton-to-McKinsey-to-Harvard-MBA? The one with two perfect kids? She’s freakin’ tired, okay?

-But she goes to the gym every day.

Well yeah, that helps with her stress.

-SHE musters the energy. Get off your ass.

Hmmm… no.

[more groaning]

Also, she has self-professed trouble setting boundaries and always says yes when her boss asks, even if it’s Saturday, and sometimes I swear, she seems to be teetering on the brink of sanity…

-But she’s doing it all! Of course she’s a teensy bit tired!

Also, she has a lot of household help, so she’s not really doing it all. Other people are helping a lot too. Plus, her in-laws take the kids one weekend a month so she and Mr Fancy-Pants have breaks. Besides, did you forget how tired they always look? What about her giant dark circle eyes and his early grey hair? There’s one thing on the list they’re not doing: sleeping enough.

-So, what, they should have days of despair too?

They DO! They do have these days. We all do. Because humans were not made with only half the emotional range (all uppers). We weren’t given infinite energy.

-That’s just a lie you’re telling yourself to make you feel better about being so different from those fancy friends of yours.

No, we’re the same. We’re all humans. When all this humaning got started in fact, we were all completely wild and dirty. Hell, we didn’t even have clocks, or houses, or jobs. Tribes roamed. Kids roamed. We made stuff. We gathered and killed things. We ate them. We knew what the woods smelled like just before rain. We could tell when to take cover. We knew the color of dawn every day.

-So what? That was a long time ago. Anyway I don’t see how this is relevant.

It’s what’s in our DNA. It’s what we spent most of human history doing. The way we live now is like the last minute of the entire hour of human existence. Of course we’re not entirely used to the way we do now.

-Are you suggesting we go back to the way things were? Are you insane?

I’m suggesting we listen to our bodies and our needs a little better. Did you know that Anthropologists who study tribal life today think there was probably a shocking amount of downtime for most early humans, since weirdly it doesn’t take that much time each day to ensure you have shelter and food?

-No.

You know what else? There’s evidence that we didn’t even sleep eight hours in a row back then. Some scientists think we got up at 3am for fireside community time. Why do you think we all wake up in the wee hours, anyway?

-Now you’re just making stuff up.

No, this is real. Humans are a lot different than we think.

-Your point?

If we didn’t work a straight 8 hours a day back then, and we didn’t sleep a straight 8 hours a night, then things were more fluid. So is it any wonder that our bodies want to walk dreamily through sunny afternoons and do nothing, or wake up at three in the morning and gaze at the moon? What else are our desires telling us? If we listened inward, just a little bit more, instead of listening to all the voices outside, what might happen?

-Jeez, are you gonna go dance around a bonfire later, and scream like a banshee, or what?

That’s not a bad idea actually. I kind of like it.

[eye rolling]

Yeah, I could get into a little wild abandon. It’s been a while.

[gurgles weakly in protest]

You know, I think I’m starting to feel a little better. All this wallowing was fun, but that banshee idea perked me right up.

-Glad I could help. (OMG). Don’t you need to create some sort of useful exercise for your readers now or something?

Oh that? Sure…

[runs off into the fields]

What would it take to let yourself be more wild and free today? How different would that feel? Can you let go of some expectations? Or is there a moment of darkness it might be helpful to wallow in for a minute?

-Marisol