About three months ago, a profound Instagram post popped up on my timeline: “you are not meant to bloom in every season.” Little did I know then that saying would become a mantra during the next few months, when I would inevitably get down on myself for feeling like I’m not doing enough.
This thought would become loud in the moments when I would be lying down in bed, recovering from bouts of tachycardia, without anything to distract me. These were also the moments when I missed what Joe and I had the most.
When I turned 26 last June, I had a very different idea of how this year was going to look. A month into it, the tides slowly began to turn. I had experienced my first heart-wrenching breakup, and my health was slowly unraveling. At the time, I would have quite literally done anything to go back to my birthday, which was one of my favorite birthdays thus far.
But I couldn’t go back, and I was bitter about that. I wanted to continue falling for someone who was a good and safe choice for me, who could be there to hold me when my body was betraying me. I didn’t want to inwardly scream at the blue, cloudless sky about the outcome of the situation which I had gotten myself into. It goes without saying that I got the latter, not the former. And I have spent much of the last seven months mourning all of the things that happened, but underneath all of that, the tides were changing in another direction.
That quote from the Instagram post prompted a reckoning with the beliefs that I have held deeply for the majority of my life.
The biggest belief, which will come as a shock to no one who has been following my columns for any length of time, is my toxic relationship to resting.
To be perfectly honest, I have no recollection of when my aversion to resting started. It probably was baked into my DNA to some degree because both of my parents are high- achieving individuals. Case in point: my mom was inputting some final patient notes when she was in labor with me.
And later, like all toddlers, I remember getting to the stage when I didn’t want to take my afternoon nap anymore because I thought I was going to be missing something important. The main difference between me and other children who didn’t want to nap was that because of my condition having enough rest is vital to my level of function. It took me a few years to understand that fact, and once I did, I stopped fighting my naps so much.
It was around that time that I subconsciously began to associate resting with being lazy, and I already had the awareness that because I have never been able to physically walk and jump around, society’s perception of me might be that my body is lazy. The only way that I had the wherewithal to combat this was to work very hard in regard to school and my future career and only allow my body to rest when it absolutely demanded it. Because, in my head, my accomplishments would be enough to show people that I’m not lazy.
I now know that working myself to that degree is not sustainable. And this is a relatively new realization for me because I did do six internships in addition to my freelance writing gigs while being in grad school. That was back when my health was more stable. Now my body needs a lot more rest in order to make it through a day. And I’m learning how to give myself grace for that because I have had to lie down a lot more and use techniques to calm my heart rate.
Still, there have been a lot of times in the past two months when I have gotten down on myself because opportunities that I really wanted didn’t pan out. These instances often happen when I’m scrolling LinkedIn and comparing myself to others. Three months ago when that would happen, I would spiral for a bit, then hit the ground running — sending emails, following up with people and scheduling Zoom calls with all my connections in the publishing world.
Now, I’m still working and trying to make connections to the extent that I can. But I’ve made the decision that I’m not going to sacrifice my health for my career.
Because as corny as it sounds, I know I’m going to accomplish my dreams someday. And I realize now that when I do get a job as a literary agent, I’m going to need to be healthy enough to do the job.
It’s a work in progress for me but I’m learning to rest in this season, so I can bloom later.
Gazette columnist Joanna Buoniconti is a freelance writer and editor. She is currently pursuing her master’s at Emerson College. She can be reached at columnist@gazettenet.com.