a love letter to demand avoidance
I love to come up with elaborate projects… multi-step adventures that require preparation, homework, learning, practice, execution and devotion. And oftentimes, I love doing those projects until a certain, mysterious point, in which the project I was so lovingly working on suddenly becomes: A Demand.
Ah, the sweet and clumsy dance of caring for myself.
I am currently feeling the creep of overwhelm with mounting medical appointments, as well as the hectic schedule of being a therapist during the wintertime, tending to the frazzled nervous systems of those who are accelerating towards the new calendar year at a feverish and frenzied pace… meanwhile also doing admin and emails and trying to keep up with the passion projects I committed to when the days felt longer and I felt more like a full person and less like a paper doll.
All things considered, it isn’t difficult to figure out why I’m overwhelmed. I know the medicine I require is a slowing down, a shedding of obligations and external demands, attuning to my natural rhythms to quiet the chaos that surrounds me. And somehow, this is the medicine that often feels the most inaccessible, the time-scarcity that winds and tangles in the cogs of capitalism and internalized ableism.
I was going to write a list (that I’ve even already compiled, lol) as the scaffolding for this post. It was intended to include ways of working with demand avoidance in a supportive and embodied way. I’m excited to share those with you in the future, but I cannot today - since typing those felt like an untenable demand. It felt impossible to fathom something share-able coming from the muck of my current state.
So instead, I wrote this reflection (above) and read a letter from my past self. Something I wrote in a previous period of demand avoidance, a state when doing anything feels as if I am swimming upstream.
On May 13, 2024, in the company of my good spirits, I wrote this “love letter to demand avoidance” in my journal. I am sharing this excerpt with you below:
what if you weren’t meant to do things
when you are told?
what if what you’re “supposed” to do
isn’t for you?
what if you were meant to do everything
on purpose,
against the current,
so that,
when you are weary
of the fight
and need to rest,
you need only
to float,
and breathe,
letting the current
gather you
in loving arms,
carrying you home
to your self
where you belong.”
a special thanks to Aniza Paz, my beloved pomba gira, who was with me when i wrote this in my journal, challenging me to see these parts of myself not as problems to be solved, but as medicine in their own right. thank you. i love you.
