Letting Go

Today was my first day of summer break.

I worked on lesson plans. For next year. For six hours.

I washed dishes and vacuumed.

I read teaching books. For four hours.

That’s my day.

My entire day.

Tonight depression got hold of me, and I think, maybe I was just running away from it coming all day because I knew that it would.

It’s the letdown of abrupt change. It happens to healthy people. It happens worse to me because my brain doesn’t shift very successfully. My brain drives a bit like a teenager – too fast or too slow and with very little finesse in the braking and accelerating.

Then, tonight, sub brother said to me, “What if you let yourself have two days when nothing you did was wrong?”

Of course, he doesn’t mean like The Purge when morality and legality cease to exist. But… nothing rather, you know, that I… do whatever I do… and not judge it.

And… somehow that seems much more unreasonable than The Purge. Which is probably why it hasn’t been made into a Hollywood movie and murdering people without compunction has…

But… it has stuck with me for the last couple of hours. I came upstairs to write my blog and promptly got caught up in unpacking standards… For next year… And I got hard on myself about not letting go, or avoiding my feelings or… whatever this compulsion is…

And then I thought about what sub brother said.

I’m not sure if I have it in me to just… let go… I have this image of what letting go looks like… it means… NOT working… it means… I don’t know what… relaxing (I’m not sure what that looks like), it means… I don’t even know.

So, because I can’t comprehend relaxation, I think I should at least be productive (for the immediate future, not next fall) and clean the house, do the dishes, cook some meals, do some laundry, mow the yard, take out the recycling… there is so much that I could do that I’ve let myself fall behind on because of work… that Sir has let slide because of… work… and now I’m off, I could at least do those things. Not exactly “letting go” that most people would think of, but at least “letting go” of school…

But I couldn’t do that.

What if I could let go of judging whatever I do for the next two days?

Something in that causes me terrible pain. I’m not sure what it is, or what the pain is…

It’s the same pain of forgiving myself…

I don’t understand it.

But it is.

And I’m not sure if this pain is always in me and that I just stay mean so I can avoid feeling it… or if the pain arises when I think about how mean I am to myself…

I don’t think I’m sad for my meanness.

I’m too mean to feel bad about it.

I think I’m mean to avoid this…

And that makes me really wish I knew what this was.