He Restores My Soul

I stood across from the wall-length mirror in the gym, hefting the smallest set of weights they had. All around me, men grunted and raised pairs of fifty or seventy pound dumbbells while I strained with my pair of five pounders.

The figure in the mirror was difficult to look at. She'd gained 25-30 pounds in convalescence. Her face was spotted all over from breakouts she couldn't keep her hands off. She was lifting five pound weights where once she'd worked her way up to twelve.

Still, for the first time in eight months, I looked at her and I said, "We can do this. We're going to roll it all back."

And I meant it.

I've been told that part of growing up is learning the limits of the medical establishment.

Coming in loud and clear, Houston, loud and clear.

Multiple tests, doctors, and supplements later, there are still no clear answers as to why I collapsed twice last year and was unable to return to Japan. No clear medical label to explain why it took me eight months to emerge from the valley and go, "Oh. There I am."

In April, we emptied out our house in Spring and put it on the market. Our new, smaller rental is "out in the boonies" as my parents say, but still accessible to them. We pass several cow and horse pastures on the way in and out. The horse pasture across from us permits lovely views of grazing horses.

It is so quiet out here.

The house is in good repair. I no longer worry about what is going to break down next.

In between short bursts of energy spent filling the house with our furniture and belongings, I rested. Often in the dark, with a candle and a heating pad and the Switch. I napped almost every day.

You should be writing more on your novel, my brain whispered. Or at least find something to say on your blog. Have you read anything to your Youtube channel lately? You have zero crocheted hats, why is that? You've got three open embroideries just sitting around. By the by, you did promise yourself you were going to make goodbye cookies for all the old neighbors and hello bread for all the new ones, gonna get around to that anytime soon?

My task, for a very long time, was to shove that all to the farthest corner of my brain and answer, "I'm aware. Not yet."

Removing friction points and resolving unfinished tasks became paramount. We got a used elliptical so I didn't have to force myself to leave the house for exercise. With all the bread I'd begun to bake, we got a cloth box proofer to ease the rising process. I patched ripped furniture with colorful cloth. Sewed up hems I'd ignored for months. Helped Sergey put up the artwork a few pieces at a time. Assembled various new pieces of furniture. Cleaned and hung the bird feeders on their poles.

In time, I went from episodic visits to the gym for 20 minutes on a low level of the elliptical to near daily hour-long upper-limit sessions that left me dripping. All the artwork is up on the walls. Every room of the house has both purpose and all its furniture.

Lately, I've begun to weed the small garden bed in front of the house. I've never wanted to garden before, but the landlord covers mowing, not maintenance of the garden bed.

"Besides," I told myself. "It isn't like the last house, practically a forest. It's just a little garden bed out front. We can handle this."

So, every now and then, I will go out toward the end of the day when the sun is lowest, and spend a couple hours pulling weeds and spreading mulch. My progress is slow, but I've begun to see the difference as I go.

Finally, in the last week, I've begun tracking my calories, daily weight, and time spent exercising. Up until this point, I buried those firmly at the bottom of the "aggressively do not allow this to matter" pile, because in some seasons you cannot survive without letting go of the things that stress your body. But, after eight months, I feel restored enough to take on the physical stress of watching my intake and increasing my exercise.

Instead of waking at 11am or noon, I've started setting my alarm for 10am and skipping the previously required nap. Because of this, lately, I've also been able to skip the evening dose of hydroxyzine that stills my mind enough to let me get to sleep at night. At this time, that leaves me on two supplements, one daily prescribed medication for my gut, and one occasional prescribed medication for my sleep.

A couple days ago, I wrote chapter 2 of 4 for the next arc in The Remara Phenomenon. It has everything to do with my own journey through the wilderness. I wrote 2700 words in one go and collapsed happily into bed, because my fear of the story had run off to hide itself again.

I am grateful beyond words for restoration to this state. Even so, I have to fight to hold onto some of the lessons I learned while I was too incapacitated to run full tilt.

Lessons to hold onto

• "No." I came to the end of my resources in these last eight months, to a point where I was forced to tell many people I cared about, "No, I can't. No, I don't have it. No."
  
  This is a basic boundary for many people. To me, disappointing someone I care about seems no different than being intentionally cruel, and I could never. Would never. Until there's literally nothing left to hand out. Somewhere along the line, I came to believe that trying to own my own time was selfish if someone else wanted it. That if I had it to give, I was obligated to do so.
  
  In 2019, when I was recovering from one of the worst experiences of my life, I wrote, "It’s okay to take care of those people and things directly at my fingertips. It’s okay to take care of myself and make that the first priority instead of the last, or even the third or second priority. It’s okay to sink my arms up to the elbows in the garden of my own life and pour my heart and soul into my own soil and watch it flourish. It is okay to pluck the fruits for myself, doing so does not make me a heartless, evil person."
  
  But that can only happen with some judiciously chosen uses of the word, "No." I'm not required to be at the end of my rope before I'm allowed to use it.
• Privacy. I can't tell you how many times I thought, "I should blog about that," in these last few months. A corner of my mind was always jittery, feeling like I had to externalize my experience. Paint it with words. Make it visceral to someone else, so I could be seen and understood. My brain came at this demand from every angle, including the don't you want to look back on this time and see your progress recorded along the way? tack.
  
  But there isn't a moral every day. There isn't even a cohesive story to tell week to week. Often, the lesson isn't clear until much later. Sometimes the story is just you, fighting your own brain for hours and days at a time, as you aggressively rest in bed, distracting your brain from clawing at you by setting it in front of an anime or a video game.
  
  It is okay to live a quiet, private life--whether for your whole life or just for a season. To get up, shower, cook a good meal, do what chores you can, and rest. Settling into a gentle rhythm that is nothing to write home--or the internet--about, isn't that what most people dream of?
  
  Not every moment, thought, or deed needs to be taken captive by the internet for my life to have meaning.
• Rest. The biggest obstacle to rest is my overactive conscientiousness.
  
  It's a waste of time to play Stardew Valley for hours. It's a waste of time to plow through three successive anime series--do you really think listening to Japanese is a substitute for studying? It's a waste of time to sit there in your bed, listening to gentle music, looking out the window at the rain on the lawn.
  
  And yet. Every time I defied the voice, hogtied it, and crammed it into the smallest closet in my brain I could find, I could all but hear my body singing, "Thank you."
  
  Whatever that voice said, I knew this would not last forever. Early on I showed signs of improvement, though small, that pointed toward eventual recovery. Spending hours largely immobile was going to be a transitory season, and I needed to allow myself to immerse as much as possible.
  
  Let's be honest. I did not actually know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would recover beyond whatever point I was at on any given day. But I had to act as if I would, which led me to fighting for my rest as much as possible. I would never recover if I kept pushing as hard as possible every day.
  
  And now? Now I have to hold onto rest. Not all the time, not for hours every day. But I need to recognize when I'm getting soul-weary. To stop, to say, "Hey, maybe can I get a rain-check on that hangout?" To go back to my room, pick up some crochet, put on soft music again, and just... be.

It's been eight months since I collapsed and returned to the US. It's been six since I wrote a substantive blog post. It's been two since I managed to grind out the first chapter of The Remara Phenomenon's new arc.

This week, I celebrate my favorite passage of the 23rd Psalm.

He restores my soul.