Self Check In

They say to check in with yourself to remain healthy, don’t they? To sort of do a self analysis and see where you are with things. See how you are. It makes sense because we all have a tendency to just power through things we maybe shouldn’t. 

Oh, my foot hurts, eh, no big deal. 

Oh, my tooth hurts, it’ll go away. 

Gosh, my chest hurts, it’s probably something I ate. 

On and on. 

From small to maybe not so small. 

We neglect ourselves.

It reminds me of how it took my dad being bitten by a brown recluse and having to go to the doctor to get it looked at and have the area scraped (BLEH! Having been bitten twice, I luckily beat the bugger before it ate me away) and they discovered he had had a heart attack in the past, need a stint put in, and that he had cancer. 

Had that spider not bitten him…would we have ever known before it was too late?

I know I am guilty of not checking in with myself. 

It is far easier to ignore how I am feeling, inside and out, and it’s usually for the best. 

My teeth need some work but girl, I just don’t have the time or want to spend the money. 

I should get a physical and general check up since it’s been before the pandemic since that happened but don’t necessarily have a doctor and again, time and money factor in. I tend to ignore doctors unless there’s something that is clearly not going away. I recently busted a toe and knew there wasn’t a lot they could do so I didn’t go get it checked. So I kept re-injuring it over and over. It’s been two months and I am finally almost healed but ZOWIE it’s been no fun. 

The biggest concern for me is internally, in the head. 

I’m not great. 

It’s a fascinating and sad look into where we are at as a society when if you are not on social media you sorta go invisible.
It’s a death,of sorts and all those ties are cut. 

We don’t keep one another’s phone numbers. 

We don’t like to email – I recently learned someone I have known for over fifteen years thought it was ‘weird’ I had emailed them, so there you go. 

If you aren’t on socials, you don’t exist. 

I have found that out in spades. 

It’s been heartbreaking beyond any way I can convey to see how many friendships and connections I have made over the years have just faded away. I had hoped that by warning folks I was disappearing it might  spur folks to take down my email but not so much. 

I found social media too much for me and had become an ‘angry sharer-er’ in that the politics of the day had made too many of my posts vitriolic and it wasn’t healthy for me. 

I chose to leave, so I can’t act like something happened to me that I didn’t want, but it’s still sad. 

Sad that I have discovered how me and my family are about all I have. 

That’s life though. 

I chose to walk away from some things to focus on getting my head straight at a very bad time in my life, and it was the right thing to do. 

But it doesn’t make things easy. 

We hope that the people we hold dear, and who are closest will remain that way but that’s just not the way it works. 

We forget friendship is a pact, that it is work, and when it stops becoming easy we back off or let it go. 

We let things get in the way of it because it’s easier to walk away.

I never would have guessed how many people who were once close, were once cherished, are now as distant as strangers.  

Not all friendships are built to last, just like not all relationships are meant to last. 

All we can do is try to remember the good times. 

It’s sad though, how many people who I was once close to because we were all just an instant message away are now either gone completely or names in my phone that seem to reply to text messages out of a sense of duty rather than a desire to keep the friendship going. 

I have sadly learned the place I had in a lot of lives. 

Such is life. 

We should be better to one another though.

As we get older we get more isolated and we start to lose people, one way or another and we end up leading lonely, isolated lives. It’s a tragedy how social we are but how isolated we become the longer we live. How the people who helped make us into the people we are just disappear making us ask – who are we then?

Who are we?

We should be better to one another. Kinder. More patient. More understanding. And we should get past ourselves and see the world around us.

If only it were that easy.

So as I check in on myself, I am doing the best I can. 

I poured myself into my writing, and into my family as I get through the hard times we’ve faced and as I sorta figure out who I am now. 

I feel like I have become a burden. 

I feel like my friendship was a burden for a lot of folks and now that hey are able to be free of me, they’re better for it. 

Perhaps that’s so. 

It’s not for me to say. 

I will just do the best I can. 

We do the best we can. 

That’s all we can ever do. 

But sometimes you just wish you were doing a little better. 

Take care of yourself friend.

Check in on yourself.

Be honest with yourself with what you see. You’re all you have, in the end, and the world needs ya. It needs all the decent people it can get.

…c…