A couple of weeks ago, I sent out a tweet that probably should have embarrassed me.
I had been living alone for almost two months, and up until then, I had plenty to occupy my time. I was setting up the apartment, for one, and felt like I was running to the hardware store most evenings after work. My incredible group of friends rallied around me, making sure I always had someone to occupy my time, and so a lot of my evenings were busy. I was also just tired and wasn’t so concerned if my Wednesday night was spent on my couch.
But once normality started to settle over my routine, and I no longer found myself relying on my friends to pull me back from some epic wave of sadness, I found myself twiddling my thumbs at about 6 PM every night. Work was over. It was too early to start cooking dinner. I preferred to do my yoga in the morning. What the hell do people do with themselves when there isn’t another body in the room?
I mentioned this quandary I found myself in during a therapy session, and my therapist, to her credit, looked puzzled. “What do you want to do?” she asked. I rattled off a bunch of things — take an acrylic painting class, go to a bar with a book, maybe take myself out to dinner. When she countered by asking why I wasn’t doing any of those things, I didn’t have an answer for her. So she provided it for me: “Maybe you don’t actually want to do any of those things. Maybe you just think you should want to do those things.”
I am dealing with a classic struggle between my brain and my body. My brain, having been trained in the art of “what’s the point of being sad?” from the day I was born, is constantly looking to move on from grief by throwing myself into another project. (Is it any surprise that my first book deal came about after a devastating layoff?) So now here I am, making my way through the latter parts of sadness, my brain is trying to distract itself. I sit on the couch and guilt myself about all of the things I can be doing.
In the past, I would have basically plank-walked myself into any number of these activities. But there is something monumental about the sadness I’ve been parsing. My body is refusing to respond to my brain’s bullying. For the first time in my life, I’m allowing myself to sit still.
Most nights, I make myself dinner, turn on the TV, and couch potato it up until about 9:30 PM. At that point, I place myself in bed, read for a half-hour, and then knock out.
This in and of itself feels like a radical act for me. In my 20s, I filled every evening with plans — dates, events, drinks with friends. I never let myself sit still long enough to let the sadness and loneliness catch up with me. But now, I’m 31, and I’m fucking tired. And I think I’m ready to just sit and let myself feel all the things.
I’m not worried that I’ll be in this state of stasis forever, and that in and of itself is a change. I trust myself to know what’s right for me and to know when I’m ready to take the next step. But doesn’t a little hibernation sound fantastic at the moment? Why am I so mentally resistant to sitting on the couch if it feels so good at the moment?
I guess I’m just trying to remind myself that healing doesn’t always require some type of eat/pray/love epiphany. It doesn’t always look like throwing yourself into a tap class like Charlotte York, or starting a diary like Brigitte Jones. Sometimes it looks like parking your ass on the couch and rewatching Portlandia for the 20th time. Rest can be radical. And so I will continue to do just that.
This week’s trio
I went upstate this past weekend and scored a bunch of things from a half-dozen antique shops up there, most of which I shared on my Instagram. Would you guys dig if I shared some of my antiquing tips and tricks? Let me know
I just finished reading The Song of Achilles and bawled my eyes out. That’s all you need to know. Please read it. (Just a disclosure: I am a Bookshop affiliate and may collect a commission from that link. Thanks!)
My favorite things to watch while vegging on the couch, in no particular order: The Sopranos, My Cousin Vinny, Working Girl, Moonstruck, and Marie Antoinette. You?
xx MDR