Spring cleaning

Our house this week has been ransacked by THE FLU.  First Oli got it on the weekend, then Benji, and now me and my poor mother who was visiting to help with the kids while Tim was in the field.   The worst part of being sick, besides the actual vomiting and fatigue and body pain and whatnot, is the total helplessness I feel.  I am used to being a highly competent person.  I get shit done.  Usually while thinking about how I'm going to get other shit done.  If I can cram 50 hours worth of stuff into a 24 hour period I feel like it has been a good day.  So spending 30+ hours completely flat on my back and not being able to doing anything other than breathe and whine and be sick is torture for me.  The irony that sitting still is what I teach in my yoga and meditation classes is not lost here, friends.
 


But I have had a lot of time to fret over think about all the things I'm not doing: I'm not going to work at my new job where surely they must think I have the world's worst work ethic to call in sick my first week.  I'm not outside enjoying the beautiful sunshine.  I'm not cooking or cleaning or organizing or even eating, which let's face it, takes up a lot of my day.  I'm not running or swimming or walking or lifting weights (don't laugh, I try, I'm terrible at it).  I'm not playing with my kids.  I tried but Oli jumped on my belly and that was the end of that.  I'm not making anything, not being productive, not using my creativity or hands to do anything other than rub my tummy while I moan.  I'm not reading.  I'm getting behind on my school work.  My plants are all wilty but I don't have the energy to water them.  I need a bath, my hair probably smells like puke.  I can't seem to stay awake for more than an hour at a time.  I never sleep, especially in the middle of the day.  Sleep is for lazy people, you see, and I pride myself on being anything but lazy.  I wear my workaholism like a badge of honor.




Ahhh.  Here lies the real issue.  Not that I'm sick.  But that I won't allow my body to be sick.  My damn ego wants to convince the rest of me (and anyone else who will listen) that I am just way too important to be out of commission.  The world, you seen, needs me.  Never mind that the kids pretty much put themselves to bed (with some needling on my part), that Tim (who is now home) is completely preoccupied playing his video game, that work probably barely registered I wasn't there, that absolutely nothing happened because I stopped DOING.  Nobody cares that I have the flu except me.  And I don't mean that in a self-pitying "nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll eat some worms" kinda way.  But the reality is: death is coming.  Some people try to ward it off by staying young-looking and fit and getting plastic surgery or never having kids or never growing up.  I ward it off by running around and around and around and around until a day like today shows up and says, "Hi, it's me, your old friend Mortality.  How much you getting done now, Sunshine?"



It's a gift really, a day like this, when you have a pounding headache and water sloshes around in your acid-filled tummy and everything hurts.  It reminds you that you are enough, just you, not your accomplishments, not your accolades, not the you who everybody thinks you are or should be.  But you, in your soggy, sweaty pajamas, with your puke-hair and your migraine and your terrible breath.  The you underneath all that clutter of expectations that wants to get better, that wants to live, that wants to go back to running around and forgetting how important it is to wake up to being here.  Because this is mediation folks: the in breath and the out.  The waking up and falling asleep.  The coming home and the wandering far far away. 




On that note, it is time for a nap.