Weekends and Worthiness

I struggle to relax on weekends. I always feel like I am letting myself down if I relax and lounge in bed and read or sleep over the weekend. It's not even a three-day weekend, it's a total of a day and a half, Friday and Saturday. But I’m still sitting and writing justifications for not working on my many goals during the two days. A friend asked me why I struggle so much with relaxing over the weekend; taking a break from to-do lists, and needing to achieve goals, and be the ever-illusive “productive”. When she first asked I didn’t have a great answer, it was just regurgitating excuses. Sitting with the uncomfortable question, I broke down and analyzed what was triggering the feelings. I came up with a few different angles of why I struggle so much with relaxing over weekends.

Firstly as someone who grew up in a religious home, we weren't allowed to use pens, pencils, and technology on the Sabbath and holidays. For me as someone who processes and enjoys writing this was one of the first struggles I had religiously. Even at 8 years old, I really just wanted to relax by sitting and writing a new story that came up in my head, whenever it came up. I hated trying to keep all these flashes of ideas that came up in my head for 26 hours when I had plenty of pens and paper lying all over my desk. It was the same struggle during the two long holidays during the year, they are 8 days but with four days like the sabbath and four days that are semi sabbath, and one of the main things we were taught constantly was that we weren't allowed to write. I never understood the reasoning, since in the same breath we were told to do things that make us happy. In this very prescriptive manner of eating meat and drinking wine (triggering binge eating and drinking struggles, but that's a post for another time). But my happy place was writing. So I learned to find a hiding place or a time that no one was around to write and relax. It created this belief that my way of relaxing was wrong and even after leaving the way of religion that I grew up in, there is still this internal guilt when I write and enjoy myself in that way. I also hated how many of these days existed both Sabbath and the holidays that we were just mandated to stop, learning, working, and doing things that made you happy and just be in this holding place doing nothing for the sake of god and religion.

Secondly and the deeper struggle with relaxing and enjoying over the weekend is what I call the “disability-productivity complex”. As a disabled person, the two tropes that exist in tandem are either you are a hero and incredible for being alive and getting out of bed in the morning, or that your existence is a drain on society and not wanted. Both of these tropes are extremely toxic and trigger a deep pressure to produce, create, and be productive, even or especially when the rest of the world is taking a break. It is also connected with listening to probably too many podcasts and reading too many books about creating and producing and "making it".I want to create and change the world, so I have plenty of my own internal pressure, and the external pressure of the constant need to produce in different forms while helpful, doesn't help with the struggle of taking a break.

My mental health struggles of feeling anxious or bouncing to depression also trigger this pressure to create and produce, in different ways. Right off of center on each side of the spectrum (If I am in the middle with anxiety and depression at opposite sides), there is a small window of heightened creativity, but that is a very small window of both time and mental space for that creativity to come to fruition. When I can notice where I am in the cycle I try to grab on to the ability to create whether for uni or for myself, and I pretty much disregard what day and time it is. But consistency is a struggle, my mental and physical and mental health since they seem to run on opposite schedules, so that doesn't help with the idea, and need to take breaks and relax. My mentality's motto is if my body and mind are both on the same track and going in the same direction, I'm going to try and use all the momentum at that moment to create.

My struggles, both physical and mental and intertwined with my desire to create and share with the world. And when balanced with rest and rejuvenation I will be able to share more. Part of it is rewiring all my history and unpacking societal influences, while also learning that taking breaks and relaxing will make my creating better in the long term. My weekends are worthy of taking breaks from my wheelchair and its complexities with creation.