Rabbits, Resting

The other day, I saw two rabbits chasing each other around the backyard. Rabbits are supposed to be crepuscular (meaning most active at dawn and dusk), but this time of year they are too juiced up to care that it’s 2pm. They are probably celebrating that it rained last night, that the heat wave has broken, that everyone’s lawns are covered in white clover, that the sky is full of fluffy white clouds and there’s a mild breeze and they are young and alive, alive, alive.

I remember that feeling, of being so full of life that I had to move. To run as fast as I could just to feel my heart pound. Those were impossibly long days spent freely wandering, drinking from hoses, laying under trees. Those were days without sunscreen or air conditioning, days I left the freezer open a little bit too long while picking out a popsicle. Days I thought my body would never end.

These days are different. My brain is the same—oh, does it ever want to run. To read all the books and write all the essays and draw all the comics and do cannonballs in the pool. My brain says sleep is for the weak. My brain says make, do, live. And the tiny bodies that I’m shepherding through life, the ones I grew inside my own body, say the same.

“Mama, can I tell you—”

“Mama, can I show you—”

“Mama, can I have—”

“Mama, can we go—”

Yes. More. NOW.

I want to give it to them, all of it. All of my heart and my time and my attention. All of this bright, hot, beautiful world.

And yes, I know there are some mother rabbits who can chase their children through the backyards, through the woods, running through the tall grass just to feel their hearts pound. But I am not one of them. My body demands less. My body demands rest.

I have a complicated relationship with rest. I think most of us do. In this country, at this time, when information is more accessible than ever, when corporate marketing is unavoidable, when hyper-productivity and hustling are prized over everything else, when we’re encouraged to monetize every hobby and maximize every connection or interaction, rest feels next to impossible. So much so that some of us, including me, don’t even know how to begin to do it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I spent many years stitching my self-worth to my achievements. I thrived on the dopamine hits of doing and making. When my body no longer allowed me to do or make—at least not in the way I was used to—I had to unravel all of those stitches. Learning to relocate my worth from doing to being was the first step in finally, maybe for the first time in my life, learning how to rest.

It's easier, I think, to envision resting the body. Couches, pillows, beds. We still know, on an instinctual level, how to lay ourselves down. And sometimes, for some bodies (even mine), that’s enough. But other times we need a deeper rest. A disengagement from the world.

I needed that last Saturday. I’d over done it the day before, had been careening toward overdoing it all week, actually, and when I woke up Saturday morning I was already cooked. I couldn’t focus enough to read a book or watch a show. Couldn’t even bear the thought of listening to music. I stayed in my bed until mid-day, not really sleeping, but not-not sleeping. Deep resting.

It was very boring. And very necessary.

The goal, when you’re chronically ill, is to not let it get to that point. To build rest into your days, to manage your energy expenditure so that you always have a little bit left in the tank. But it doesn’t always work that way. Life intervenes. Old habits intervene. Summer intervenes. The sunshine begs you to stay outside just a little longer, to stay up just a little later. It all feels so fleeting. This season. This life. I want to say yes. More. Now.

But I know that the more I push, the more I lose.

It’s one of the quietly difficult things about being sick. One of the things I’m not sure people know about, if they aren’t living it. The constant bargaining with the body. The medical mathematics of managing a life.

Yesterday evening I went out into my front yard to sit next to my garden (one of my favorite ways to rest), and I saw a rabbit right next to my chair. It nervously nibbled at the grass, one shining black eye fixed on me. I sat down on the porch steps for a while, reluctant to interrupt their meal. After a few minutes I moved very slowly toward the chair, one small step at a time, hoping against hope that the rabbit would relax where they were, that we could sit together, that I could get a closer look. But, of course, after I took a few more steps, they turned up their cloud white tail and hopped away.

Sometimes rest feels like that rabbit: elusive, fleeting, something I’ll never actually be able to catch. And sometimes it feels like I’m the rabbit: hypervigilant, tense, unable to fully relax.

I sat in my chair and watched the wildflowers sway in the wind. I tried to let my thoughts drift like the clouds. I felt the breeze on my skin. The breath in my lungs. I thought about rabbits, resting. I sat for a while, until the setting sun burned the tops of the trees gold. I wanted to stay out longer, to watch the sun sink below the horizon, and the fireflies blink to life, but I’ve done that a few nights, lately. So I said goodnight to the rabbit, in a different part of the yard now, and went inside to go to bed.

Speaking of rest, I may be posting less over the next two months. Turns out staying home with kids full-time in summer is…decidedly un-chill. The community pool really wipes out your spoons.

What does rest look like for you these days? Are you getting enough of it? Are you team Opt-Out or are you going full summer mania? Or attempting to find something in between? Please tell me in the comments! As always, if you enjoyed this piece, please like, comment, and/or share.