Monday night I drifted through the final yoga class of my much-beloved teacher, Julie, before her retirement from teaching group classes at my kripalu studio. Sad and empty-full.
In anjaneyasana she spoke of opening to the support of the people around us. She said to seek it and accept it, “you need it.” They want to help you. It takes strength to ask.
So yesterday morning I made the request at work for a 4 week leave of absence, beginning January 6, 2014, for the purpose of admitting into the partial hospitalization program for eating disorders, Monday through Friday, 7am-3:30pm for 3-5 weeks. I did not have to state a reason to my supervisors or coworkers, only to the insurance company who manages the short term disability benefits I will hopefully be approved to receive during the time I am in the hospital.
If I did not act, and only continued to fret and concern myself with finding an answer, my dehydrated, shrunken, malnourished brain would leave me stranded on this desert, walking an endless loop, “I’m not sick enough to be in such intensive treatment. I’m too sick to get better. I don’t want to get better. I don’t want to live. Everyone else wants me to live. So I should go. But I’m not sick enough.” And on it goes.
Dr. Lockhart said to “stop thinking about it and just come.” Robert says I’m near the point of needing to be saved from myself. Mom and Joe and Celia say please take care, we need you to take care of this person we love.
And so I release myself from this brain and its tired, ceaseless chatter, and I will cling like a dust mote to this feather of hope, resting on the belief of the people who love me that I am even worth having hope, that I am worth having health, or that I am worth living. There is no flicker within, only a belief in the without.
Maybe, with time, I will see what they see. Maybe I can find and know my center and grow and shine from that place, outward.
But right now, this place I’m in is very dark and the exhaustion of fighting to see in its darkness is overwhelming. And so I will close my eyes and wait.
