exhaustion

Most of the time, I don't mind being a good listener. A good listener has many weapons in her arsenal. Nodding in encouragement, the ability to not speak unless directly asked for advice, a strong shoulder for which to cry on, long arms to hold and comfort people and of course, large ears. As a matter of fact, this blog has become my own good listener. Something without an opinion (unless I get comments) and something with no dog in the race. Most of the time, like I said, I can handle it. This past week, my resolve wavered and I got sick. Sometimes I wonder how much of a correlation there is there. I could easily say that Mark had the crud and then gave it to me, but then, I was already feeling run down and overwhelmed. I think my ears had shrunk and my shoulders had already given out. My arms were heavy and then there was this crud in the house. Sometimes, I think being sick is Gods way of telling us to slow down. Take serious time out for ourselves. Regroup.... patch ourselves up. That's sort of what happened while I was sick.

I was really miserable, but the whole time I was thinking about what needed to be done, what I should have been doing, people whose calls I need to return, calls I wanted returned, people I had been worrying about previously and how they were doing.... and then I got worse. It was like all that stress doubled my exhaustion and made everything much, much worse than what it had to be. This brings me to my point. (Yes, there is one!) Why did I have to let myself get physically ill before I started trying to take care of myself??? I actually broke down in tears last night, I was so tired and felt so bad, but I don't think that's why I was crying. I think it was because I needed to let all of that crap out. Being a good listener has it's drawbacks. Once you have heard someones problems, you tend to internalize them, make them your own. You set out to fix or at least help resolve issues that you can do nothing about, which wreaks havoc on your body. I have to learn how to let the things go that I can do nothing about or that do not directly affect me. Do you have these issues? What do you do? Are you like me? Do you let them get so out of hand that they literally make you sick? Lots of feedback please.    and PS... Blog? I love you.