You’re Still Recovering
Notes on imaginary deadlines and rebuilding a life
Baby, if I don’t do nothing else, I’m going to therapy.
Today, while I was talking about all the things I haven’t done and all the ways I should be doing better, my therapist reminded me, “You’re still recovering.”
I don’t remember exactly what I said before that, but I’m sure I was being hard on myself. That’s been a theme lately.
I’ve been trying to act like everything is okay when, in fact, my life has been in shambles.
Things are better, but better doesn’t mean fully repaired. I’m still finding my footing, figuring out what belongs in this version of my life and recovering from everything it took to get here. Somehow, I’ve decided I should also be meeting every goal, tending to every idea and operating at full capacity.
They say Rome wasn’t built in a day. Nobody tells you how long it takes to rebuild it.
Apparently, rebuilding sometimes looks like streaming the last season of Project Runway All Stars instead of meeting an imaginary deadline I gave myself.
Nobody assigned the deadline. Nobody is waiting for the work. Most people don’t even know the thing exists. Still, I can make an evening on the couch feel like a personal failure because I could be doing something more productive.
I’m good at turning the things I love into work. An idea becomes a project. A book becomes research. A beautiful moment becomes something to document. I can’t simply dream about something; I need a plan, a timeline and a date for when it’ll be finished.
Some of that is ambition. Some of it is how I’ve learned to survive.
In Sisters of the Yam, bell hooks writes about Black women “rejecting the learned impulse to try and meet everyone’s needs.”
That word—learned—made me think about how much of my urgency has been taught. I’ve learned to be useful, dependable and available. I’ve learned to keep moving through difficult seasons and make something beautiful out of what remains. I haven’t always learned how to recognize when I’m carrying too much.
I don’t want to rebuild my life around the same habits that exhausted me. I don’t want everything I create to depend on how much I’m willing to deny myself. And, I don’t want to become so focused on the woman I’m becoming that I’m unkind to the woman I am right now.
She’s still recovering.
She’s allowed to move slowly and change her mind about the timeline. She’s allowed to enjoy her life before every loose end has been tied. She’s allowed to watch Project Runway before completing a list that will never truly be finished.
Maybe celebration can look like this, too. It doesn’t have to wait until everything has been repaired. It can be an ordinary evening when I choose pleasure over pressure. It can be the relief of realizing I don’t have to live as if everything is an emergency. It can be trusting that the work will still be there tomorrow and the dream won’t disappear while I rest.
My life isn’t in the shape I want it to be yet, but I’m learning not to punish myself for needing time.
Rome wasn’t rebuilt in a day.
Tonight, it can wait.
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And thank you, always, for being here.
As I read, “My life isn’t where I want it to be yet…” and I asked myself about myself, ‘Will it ever be? When do you know when you have arrived?’