Here Be Joy
Continuing off of my last blog post,,
Mid-March was the beginning of my swimming journey. Though I had my own incentives to learn how to swim, Impact had a whole section called I Dream of Swimming. So I had to see what they were talking about; Here’s an excerpt from Anna Swanson’s “In which skinny dipping temporarily fixes a life”:
“I was simply trying to do what made my body feel good. Throughout my years of chronic illness, swimming outdoors has become an embodied way for me to experience wild places. It’s the closest I have come to the full-throated endorphin thrill I felt in my teens as a competitive paddler, when I pushed my body to find and stretch its limits. Swimming, especially in cold water, has been a way to enter the realm of sensation and to experience the endorphins of hard exercise without risking overexertion and injury.” (177)
(Well, risking overexertion is a definite possibility for me.)
Swimming had been such an anomaly to me growing up. Now in my gap year with my incentive to feel joy to heal–I seek to learn something I always wanted to embody. Since starting that process, I have wondered whether my ambition clouds my health judgment.
See, two times in April I had my first bout of Insomnia–one three days after my two days of swimming; the other the day before my period started which, to note, was late [I was rather consistent until April].
As I am not a medical professional, nor a sports/medical specialist, I cannot say that consecutive swimming [overexertion] and insomnia are correlated. As a human trying to understand my body, I say they may be connected.
Insomnia is so not fun. Restlessness is so not fun. Waking up sweating is so not fun.
A couple of weeks ago I made a new friend and one of the things we bonded over was our concussions. Both of us have noticed that every couple of months, our circadian rhythms change. Actually, our “everything” changes: our sleep, our mood, our energy, our ambition, our food intake, etc. [It was great to hear that I am not alone in my human experience.]
On and off for years I have recorded my life in journals to feel like I have a grasp on my life. My primary doctor had urged that I make note of any changes I inflict (diet, exercise) and changes to my body–both consciously and unknowingly.
It’s pretty cool to look back on–little monthly calendars, highlighted and organized to a T.
Do I have any knowledge of what any of this collectively means? No. But is it fun to organize? Yes.
My journals state that right now–May–I am in a transitory period, I am moving from insomnia into something else. For a while, I was waking up from 7-8 am. Then, for a couple of months, I was waking up around 4 am consistently, no matter the time I went to bed. Next was waking up every couple of hours after midnight–to then wake up sweating or in severe hunger pain. Most recently, my bouts of insomnia. Now, it’s going back to waking up every other hour. [Sike. Three days later and another night of no sleep–so the insomnia hasn’t left.]
I want to move, I want to swim. And so I do when I feel like I can, and sometimes when I wonder if my body should. When it comes to the hour I cannot go back to bed–I do not go back in time to see whether I cannot sleep because of how long I walked the other day–I just try to figure out how I can fall asleep next without leaving the house in the middle of the night.
Maybe it’s because it’s the week before my period (or when it’s supposed to start) that I am having a hard time believing in myself–even if I have concrete evidence of how I feel. Or that I’m having a hard time telling myself that I am trying my best.
Thus, it’s good to return to the women who always understand: the women of books:
“Something changed that summer when I repeatedly swam in joy and then cried on the trail out. I knew that I was capable of joy, and that knowledge was essential to getting through this and other difficult periods in my life. I called it survival joy. This was me clawing my way back towards the possibility of feeling okay. And while I might not be able to hold onto it for long, and might not be able to access wild swimming for many months of the year, just knowing it was possible kept me going. Amid whatever monsters, I had a door in my mind marked: Here be joy.” (181)
So, Here be joy (even though I’m currently peering under doors trying to grasp for this joy):
Capturing beauty - woo second annual spring photoshoot with Mia
Reading fiction - read The Idiot by Elif Batuman and really enjoyed her slice of college life
Sitting at the beach - #1 pelicans, #2 people watching, #3 dolphins surfing??
Hiking – though overexertion is a great possibility
Letting myself be loved and cared for - I spent a weekend with my best friend from high school (whom I hadn’t seen since graduation) and a couple of our friends. I had never known I could enjoy being around a group of people my age; I had never known such considerate people.
“i knew how to pretend to ask for help in a way where i felt i was still doing them a favour. i never really knew how to ask for help. to ask, without supplication, with courage and graciousness, a head held high and willing to receive any response. i don’t think we are taught how to do this king of asking very well.” (Chiedza Pasipanodya 127) → “i burst into tears of gratitude and of exhaustion from letting myself be taken care of, carefully.” (130)
[writing to you from mid-June,, Learning how to use DaVinci Resolve! Editing, sound, and color—my first video :) ]
“The joy I felt was small, an upward rush below my sternum. But what I remember most was relief at knowing I was still capable of joy. I closed my eyes to revel in the feeling, and it disappeared. I opened my eyes and the sensation returned. I spend fifteen minutes opening and closing my eyes. I stopped only because I needed to get into bed and lie down…[Swimming] showed me that I was still capable of experiencing sensory pleasure, the joy of being in my skin.” (180)
Though I am still finding the amount of physical exertion that works for me, just as Swanson describes, joy is still present if I let it be.