I Want to Take a Break for the Rest of My Life
If only I could let myself. Can you?
I know it’s wise to stay active, engaged, and stimulated as you age.
But a very large part of me wants to take a break for the rest of my life.
Or maybe I could hire a body double while I slip into the winds. To where, who knows?
I don’t want to end my life. I just wonder when enough is enough.
A thread of trauma has woven itself through my years, never broken for an instant.
The scary man who stalked my neighborhood and thus the childhood me.
A father who spoke harshly and threatened to use his belt.
The man who climbed through my window and assaulted me, dimming the shine of a young adult me.
Sadly, I could continue the list.
Traumatic stress takes a toll on the body, mind, and spirit. Multiple traumas can interweave to create near-constant hypervigiliance—at least for me.(Others dissociate, and still others do both.)
I’ve resolved some traumas, but others have mercilessly hung on.
When a trigger hits, I lose agency. The primal me overrides the frontal cortex. Stone-tight muscles constrict even more.
I wish I could drain each of my cells from all this woundedness, fear, and hypervigilance. The emerging fluid might turn into a river as wide and long as the Amazon. Once it merged with the Atlantic, maybe then I would feel relief—the idea of “me” then gone, gone, gone.
This web of me temporarily lives in a hypersensitive body and a hyperemotional brain. But it’s nothing more than a stream of thoughts. Like one dice placed upon another but not held together by glue, there’s no actual entity hiding in this body of mine.
It’s all just a marvelous joke.
I went for my first dose of the Shingles vaccine. Afterward, my heart was filled with a hidden glee, “Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be forced to take a break to accommodate the side effects.”
I waited for the muscle soreness and pain. I waited for the fatigue. I waited for the shivering.
I imagined myself snuggling under the covers in a fog for a gloriously full day.
But my typically overactive immune system did near to nothing. A slight soreness surrounded the injection site the first evening. I held on to a glimmer of hope.
“What will tomorrow bring?” I secretly smiled.
The next morning, I awoke slightly chilled. But that happens sometimes, anyway. Once up and about, the nippy sensations vanished immediately.
What am I saying? I want to be sick in order to take a break? Seriously? The human mind can be so complex, weird, and ridiculous.
But what can we do but accept our idiosyncrasies and love ourselves nevertheless?
I poured my Zen green tea, took a few sips, and popped up to assault the keyboard. “Why not rework that six-minute word mash on spiritual bypassing?”
I’m not a fast writer. By mid-afternoon, I felt tired—tired of the article, tired of trying, and tired of my mind. But I pushed myself to finish anyway.
4:00 pm. Time to call my sister. She’s ten years older than me.
My sister felt sad and depressed. Her long-time friends are losing their memories, mojo, and mobility.
Is this what I have to look forward to?
I did my best to listen without injecting advice, opinions, and judgments—the habitual way we emotionally bypass in everyday life. Sometimes, my ego jumps in, and I fail at this goal, being a rather opinionated soul. But I recognize the value of giving it a go.
Once the call finished, I decided to nap. Maybe a doze would correct the tiredness that had landed upon me—from writing, not the vaccine.
My dreams were filled with this and that—too busy in themselves if you ask me.
But when I opened my eyes, I found myself one with the sky.
Finally, the break I had wished for. Thoughts floated by without making a ruckus. And me existing so perfectly in this non-existent moment of time and space.
This quote came to mind:
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” — Alan Watts
This! This is what I truly want!
But the moment was broken when I leaped out of bed to clack on the keys once again and share my insights with you.
This article is part of my bi-weekly Friday Flashback series, which features “best of” articles from my archive. This piece was first published on Medium.
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I've definitely felt this way so many times. Especially dealing with burnout, which if I recall correctly you also said you experienced? Such is life. I loved how you ended with the Alan Watts quote. So easy to get busy and distracted. Love these reminders that peace is always here - even if we forget the very next minute. :)
Just ten minutes back, I was thinking this, Sandra. But it is never happening I think. No breaks. No sooner than we deal with one issue than another crops up. Ah well, it is what it is. And in between, we'll sneak in joy. Enjoyable read!