I know my limits, I just choose to ignore them
There are so many things I want to write about that I don’t know where to start.
Thankfully as we were having dinner I was showing my new designs to my husband, and one of the signs/pillows I am making says that. “I know my Limits. I just choose to ignore them”, and he suggested I should write about it since it’s one of the things that I struggle the most with.
The thing is, I have days that I have slightly less energy than a healthy person, and these are the days I like to push my luck.
I never thought of waking up feeling beyond tired, don’t get me wrong, I have been tired, I was a teen mom, I worked, took care of my kid, and when he was very young I worked events. On a weekend I’ll be back home around 4:30 to 5:00 am. I was the first person at the venue and the last one to leave. And if you have kids or know someone that has kids, you know that they don’t sleep in! They are up and running with a full battery no later than 7 am. I had regular business hours during the week and band rehearsal one day a week. I didn’t have to go to the rehearsals every week, but if we had a big event I had to.
I didn’t sleep much, didn’t eat great, and had too much on my plate. I was tired a lot!
But nothing like what I feel now. Waking up feeling that you are made of lead and having so much pain that you are not even sure what hurts exactly since everything hurts and there is no way to pinpoint it to a specific area, you are just in pain.
Having a balance is really hard because I never know for sure how I am going to feel, I can wake up feeling great and two hours later be completely drained. I also know that if I do “too much” I will pay for it, sometimes for days, but if I don’t finish doing what I need to do, is just going to become one more thing on a list that grows every week.
The way I see it and justify it, at least to my self is that things don’t stop accumulating, the world doesn’t stop just because I can’t do things that need to be done, and since there is no way to predict exactly how I am going to feel, I need to take advantage of those moments.
I love to cook and bake. If I was making burgers I seasoned the beef, had everything ready, I even made my own buns. And the food is one of the ways I show love.
If I would have to think about this a few years ago, I would still say that I wasn’t doing enough, never worried how much work they took, I just did it. Now I have to plan ahead, prep as many things when I have the energy, and try to plan as if the next day I was going to be down.
Also, I have an immunosuppressant injection every Tuesday (I do mine at night before going to sleep), sometimes it goes smooth, just normal discomfort, other times I have awful nausea and I feel horrible. Knowing this I try to plan ahead as much as I can, I try to leave food made for Wednesday, leave the kitchen clean, make important calls, and do anything else that needs to be tackled sooner rather than later.
I know I’ll be in pain, I know I’ll be drained to a point that I can fall asleep while seating and waking up feeling as tired as if I didn’t sleep for days, but I just can not do things.
Accepting that you have a limited amount of energy or a limited number of spoons as it’s better explained by Christine Miserandino https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/ in the post that I just linked.
Having to accept that you are no longer a person that can do everything, is hard, like very hard. I think about when people age and you go from being young, attractive, and full of life to someone that chooses to stay at home and watch a movie than going to a bar, you start becoming less relevant, and in many ways we become invisible.
I hate being unreliable, I can’t commit to many things, because I just don’t know. All I know is if that is something important, I’ll just ignore all the warning signs and do it anyway.
This goes to so many of us, not just about having energy, it goes to health, it goes to toxic relationships in our lives, it goes to all kinds of addictions. I admit, that I am kind of addicted to TikTok, I didn’t want to believe I was going to be so into it, but here I am. I have people I follow that I look forward to their contents, but if we are honest, it’s not healthy for us, especially if you stay up till late.
Many of us have been in bad relationships, and we are way past what we thought would be the things we would not put up with, but we stay. Only to see how the line was crossed a long time ago, how you passed any limit you knew was acceptable for you, and just stay regardless of the cost.
There was that Job that cost you friends, relationships, health and you knew you should have left it, but you stayed.
Having limits is something easy to see and set when you are looking from away, but when you are the one living it, we all know we pass the limit and choose to ignore it.
There are so many things I want to write about that I don’t know where to start. Thankfully as we were having dinner I was showing my new designs to my husband, and one of the signs/pillows I am making says that. “I know my Limits. I just choose to ignore them”, and he suggested…