They Tried To Make Me Go To Rehab

.... and I said YO YO YO.

I didn't realize at all that this is where I was going. I thought I was headed to a resort in Malaysia with my husband, because he needed to destress after a hugely difficult year (actually, I thought I was going to a resort in Indonesia - I tend to be a bit sketchy on geographic details).

I truly didn't understand how much I needed this trip too. I didn't realize until we'd been here for a couple of days, and I found myself shedding layers and layers of tension and anxiety and anger and other detritus that had built up in my psyche over the past few months.

The first couple of days I just slept. I would wake up after a ten or eleven hour sleep still feeling tired, just waiting for another chance to sleep again later in the day. I thought the exhaustion would never pass, that I would sleep twelve or thirteen hours out of each twenty-four and arrive home still shattered.

But it did pass, and that's a lesson. You sleep and sleep and eventually just don't feel tired anymore. Exhaustion is like anything, like pain, grief, fear, happiness... if you immerse yourselves in it and allow it to take its natural course, it passes and makes way for something else. Some other aspect of life.

In between sleeping, I read. I read and sleep and eat and drink and then I read some more. And in breaks I do nothing. I sit and I think. Sometimes my mind has been like a crazy, LSD-induced kaleidoscope of images and memories and sensory replays; at other times, it's been almost empty. This is the closest I've ever come to meditation. I feet like a sponge that was heavy and filled with grime and grit that's been rinsed and gently squeezed clean. I feel new.

I know not everybody can get away to a resort, and I wish everyone could. But if you can't, try to get away somewhere, sometime, for some downtime and sleep. Or find someone to take the kids or the pets and do it at home. Switch off the phones and the internet and take time out for you, to regroup and renew and become clean again. In three days, you can recharge. And it's the greatest gift you can give yourself.

I hope you get to go to rehab, very soon.