How will you stay healthy in this environment? Do you have a plan?
RE is asking me here about my plan for self-care (actually to avoid abandoning myself completely) when I return to work in 2 weeks to prison.
Actually, no. I am panic stricken. If I had thought about this better--from a position of actually caring for myself, wanting to protect myself, wanting to ensure my well-being, I would have achieved health and healthy patterns, first.
Instead I did this (submitted the application) from a mindset of desperation (unnecessary)--the sense that there was and would be total catastrophe if I did not return to work. Yes. I have depleted resources, not working--and not thinking pro-actively. Yes. The expenses of repair to properties, has been huge. Materials, and employing 2 men. But the wolves were not yet at the door.
I am stressing here that I am living (still) out of a poverty mindset. And more. I am living from a self-brutalizing mindset. While I would never in a million years treat any other person this way, I treat myself as an inadequate, lazy, shirking, nothing who has to get into shape. I take the eyes and the viewpoint of the harshest boss and critic, in anticipating how I will be seen.
Instead of taking my own point of view, as responsible for caring for and protecting myself.
How it has manifested in the last few days is this: telling myself by the time I start, in 2 weeks, I have to be able to easily walk ten thousand steps daily in the heat... Panicking that they will see that I pant sometimes (mild Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) was diagnosed last year); don't see good (get those new glasses); lose five percent of my weight!!! Have adjusted to getting up at five (going to bed at 9).
Already I am worried about being treated mean by co-workers.
The problem is: In my own mind much of the time I do not take my own side. I come to see myself as
they may: Fat and sick and old (and slightly ditzy and vulnerable--OK. This is really cruel, and really looking at myself as prey. I am feminine. Not ditzy, because ditzy, I just looked up, meaning harebrained and stupid and foolish. I am none of those things. Only human. See how this gets out of control?).
You see, I inspire envy and I inspire contempt. (But in fairness, where does the contempt come from--is it about me or somebody else?) What are my crimes?
I feel and show compassion where there is little.
I travel to my own drum.
I am unpretentious and in some ways, humble.
Those have been central choices of my life. Not in rebellion, but with purpose. (Oh, how I am beginning to regret this choice (in some ways) to go back to prison. Is this what M was afraid of, or did he want to begin caring for myself, by working for myself where I could have more protection, control, and potentially esteem and care (by my own self)?
Can I not feel compassion for myself (even in a cruel setting)?
If I decided to embrace myself now to prepare to return to work (this idea the gift from RE) it would have to begin with a different (radically different) mindset towards myself.
First, I would slow down now. (The only things that must be done are the TB test, buy a few clothes and a bit of makeup, and get eyeglasses.)
These things are optional: practice driving to the prison; practice getting up at 5 am. Because once that day comes I will get a grip. I have before and I will again. (I do not have Alzheimer's yet. Am I buying into this ageist thing? )
As far as wheezing, I may wheeze. (I do not hear myself.) And I may find the distances to walk in the heat, difficult, at first.
I can choose to stop. Or I can treat myself kindly. With patience. I can stay centered in myself. Looking out for myself, reassuring myself. I do not have to abandon myself. I do not have to beat myself up.
I can learn this.
Prisons are some of the most cruel places in the world. I have been treated very, very cruelly in the past (by staff). I do not have to tolerate it. I have nothing to prove. I can speak up for myself and I can leave, or stay as I choose.
I can choose for myself.