“Remember what you have on your left hand,” my mom says during our FaceTime call this afternoon.
My great grandfather’s ring. It represents moderation. I’ve written about it before but there’s a reason I wear it every day. It’s always going to be a weak point of mine. I am prone to extremes in most of what I do — interest and apathy, goals and apathy, love and apathy. Apathy is always on the other end of my pendulum. I hate it in others and I hate it in myself but I wear it like a favorite cloak sometimes.
My mom says that to me today as I complain about my couple days of rest nursing my knee and contemplate participating in my rec volleyball tonight (spoiler, I did) and talk about how antsy I feel wanting to run. Like, I literally downloaded a book about running to listen to and I can’t even run right now.
But she’s right. Moderation. I’ve made my mistakes with running before and tied it too tightly to my value. It’s also the downside of having lost weight; I get nervous when I can’t exercise. The devil part of my brain wants to start restricting my food until I can run again. Luckily I’m having no trouble telling it to shut up and eating what I want because I trust my body to tell me what it wants.
I think that’s what this post is really about. Listening to my body. Listening to how much rest it needs. Listening to when it tells me its safe to play volleyball if I take it easy. Listening to when it wants another club sandwich from Thundercloud because when does it not want that?
And remembering to not trick my body into extremes when most of the time all it really does want is moderation.
With Love,
Natalie
❤️❤️❤️