The Balance Between Tough And Tender
On rest and listening to your body; and pushing yourself through discomfort.
Astrology dictates that I am partial to rest. Fellow Taureans might recognise this trait in horoscope Instagram posts from Co-Star or Sanctuary, where lighthearted quips feel like a dagger to the heart. “Why they’re looking for love: [Taurus] so you can stop putting in effort to meet people.” Almost spot on (I don’t put that much effort in). According to my star sign, I like to luxuriate; I am homely and prefer nights in to nights out; I love my bed and I love to sleep. My spirit animal is probably a sloth. All of the above rings true.
Friends are often telling me how good I am at taking care of myself, at resting and not burning out. I’m often scared this translates as laziness, an adjective I use to describe myself before someone else can – classic Taurean deflection. It’s a strange dichotomy I hold within myself. I have always felt that I do a lot – that I have achieved a lot in a short amount of time or lived many lives and pack my life into these two hour Google Calendar time slots. But I also feel like I do nothing – that I live a static life, sometimes unwilling to exist outside of my own four walls.
I have not always been this way. When I was younger, I was habitually known as someone who couldn’t wait to leap from my bed before anyone else was awake to start the day. My best friend Emily used to groan when I’d sleep over at her house as a teenager, warning me before we went to sleep not to wake her up when I’d inevitably wake up at 7am, hungry for the day (and for breakfast). In my twenties I was constantly looking for the next adventure, juggling multiple jobs at once, driving down to the coast in one gulp. Perhaps it was the novelty of it all – the shiny new reality I’d only just found myself in, never settling in it too long before hopping onto the next. I’d pierce the film, peer inside then move on. Maybe I didn’t give myself time to rest, to sink into it, to uncover all its little imperfections. I think about the fact that this was a time in my life before I’d discovered cooking. Before I’d roasted a chicken and learnt the importance of leaving it to rest.
Is it the city? Is it age? Is it winter? Is it the pandemic? Am I simply looking for a way to control the world, to stop it spinning on its axis?
The answer is most likely all of the above. The city is diverting and there is always something going on, which can be overwhelming. When I lived in Cornwall I had more energy because I saved it all for the early morning swim in the river, for the day of hauling iron grills up and down beach steps, for the occasional nights at our favourite bar or the day of surfing and catching no waves, arms tired from paddling. Mixed with a pandemic that locked us in our flats, going freelance with nowhere to work but my living room, three bouts of Covid that’s yielded monthly exhaustion, a breakup that has brought back the bittersweetness of being alone; I have found myself retreating into myself, into this flat that I’ve lived in for three and a half years, that has become my cocoon when things have been hard.
As I’ve gotten older, I try to listen to my body as much as possible. As someone who didn’t care to understand their body, who can spend so much time hating it, I try. I try to eat what it wants and what it needs. I try to tune in to its idiosyncrasies and its cravings; its punishing whispers and its small triumphs. I try to rest when it tells me, but sometimes I wonder if it’s telling me a little fib – tricking me into curling back into my shell when I should perhaps be facing the world. The narrative of our generation is: don’t force yourself. But perhaps that’s a dangerous concept to buy into entirely; to never push ourselves further, yielding to fear, to tuck ourselves into a soft bed where nothing can hurt us. I consider that actively not putting effort into meeting someone, or choosing to rest instead of writing an essay, or staying at home instead of celebrating a friend: these are all ways of protecting myself from rejection. From that perpetual fear of not being good or fun or interesting enough.
This morning I read this poem by Ellen Bass called Getting Into Bed On A December Night and I relished in the romanticism of rest:
When I slip beneath the quilt and fold into
her warmth, I think we are like the pages
of a love letter written thirty years ago
that some aging god still reads each day
and then tucks back into its envelope.
I debate the difference between resting as a result of depression and resting as a choice. I have experienced the former before and it does not feel like rest, it feels like agony. There is no enjoyment in the rest, only a hurricane of thoughts so fierce and furious that the only thing you can do is lie on the floor and let them rush through you; you have no energy to fight. I have not felt that in a long time. Instead, the rest that I choose is joyful. The difference between the two is most clear with a single bite. I found little pleasure in food when I was depressed. I had no appetite and whatever I did eat tasted bland – like nothing at all.
I woke up this morning, bleary-eyed at 10am, an unusually late wake up for me, and I wondered, am I ok? Why don’t I want to get out of bed? Why do I find it so difficult to leave this space everyday? Then I remembered the stock, and without hesitation I walked to the kitchen – the air cold, the room dark – and I filled the pot with water, bay leaves, carrots, celery and bay leaves from the freezer, a handful of peppercorns, a big pinch of salt, the leftover chicken and all its juices and brought it to a boil. I thought about the smell of hot, black coffee and how good it would taste with a piece of sourdough slathered in peanut butter and apricot conserve, which my fridge was devoid of. I swiftly pulled on jeans and popped to the shops to buy some. No qualms. I gulped down the coffee and ate the toast hungrily, savouring the sticky sweetness of the conserve, standing up at the counter, the smell of stock rising up.
I am not sad (at least, not all the time). I am tired. I am getting older. I am more firm in my understanding of my body. But I’m slowly realising that rest is not always the answer. And that too much rest can render a body stiff. Rest a chicken too long and the meat becomes cold and tough. There’s always a balance to strike between being tough and tender.