Waning Ice Moon (Age: 25 days)
Sign: Capricorn
Weather: Chilly but unseasonably warm
Snow pack: 0 in
~*~*~*~*~*~
Ingvi: You worry too much and too often.
me: We've had this conversation before.
Ingvi: Yes, and yet you don't listen.
me: I listen, I just don't know what to do about it.
Ingvi: I have given you a simple answer to that.
me: Getting angry all the time doesn't do me any good.
Ingvi: Don't be angry. I didn't say angry. I said reject it. Two very different things.
me: But you tell me not to reject my feelings. I don't understand.
Ingvi: I think you do understand but you can't see quite clearly how to do it, Love.
me: Maybe.
*He sits down beside me and runs a hand over my hair.*
Ingvi: You braided it too tight again. You need to stop doing that when you're anxious. It'll break your hair and give you split ends and headaches.
me: Hair advice instead of an argument?
Ingvi laughs.
Ingvi: I'm not going to argue with you. No matter how much you bait me. No matter how well Loki has taught you to bait me.
*Ingvi smiles. He wraps an arm around my shoulders.*
Ingvi: You've been sick. You're anxious and testy. It makes you feisty and snappish. It's kind of adorable.
*I give him a skeptical look. He chuckles.*
Ingvi: So suspicious. I suppose that is better than angry. *Smiles again.* Listen to me. You don't need to cut off your feelings to spite yourself. You don't need to apologize for them either. There is nothing wrong with feelings, even the bad ones. Though I would prefer if you stopped calling them 'bad,' to be honest. Because there is nothing morally wrong with unpleasant feelings. They're just unpleasant. They're morally neutral, like pain. It is the context that determines your opinion of the feeling and even that is subjective and not truly a moral component. So, if you could please stop calling them 'bad' feelings, I'd appreciate it.
Anyways. Unpleasant feelings happen. Life is frustrating and hard. Depression comes and goes, even for the most healthy of people. Sickness comes and goes for everyone. Even gods. I am not here to tell you that these things will magically go away when you reject them... No, not reject them. Hmm.. Better way to phrase it; these things will not magically go away when you reject the mental baggage that goes with them. Depression will still be there. You will still have asthma and colds will still suck. However, you will not be in as much agony when you reject the story that these things are signs of your moral failings (of which you have fairly few, dear, trust me). Weakness makes you human.
Your humanity is what I love about you. Weakness and all. Especially weakness. *He smiles slyly.* Not all weakness is a bad thing, my dear. But, you know that. You just tell yourself that it is the only acceptable time to be weak. *He shakes a finger at me, putting on a mock stern expression.* No weakness is acceptable. *He smiles.* Do you feel better for my having told you that? Does it make your narrative complete, I having told you the one and only lie I will ever say to you?
*I shrug.*
I didn't think so. Because you and I, we both know that is not true. Weakness is like gravity. It is a functional flaw of construction. You can build a mighty building but it will still have stress points and weaknesses. The question is how to compensate for them. You can't do that when you deny them or ignore them. You can do a great deal of damage to your building when you do that.
*He cups my chin in his right hand and turns my face towards his.* You are not allowed to do intentional damage to yourself. That time has passed. Now we are going to be healthy. Yes you have your chronic illness and your disability, but that doesn't excuse you not being healthy. Thousands of people live lives that are healthy despite their illnesses. Health is more than a physical state of being and you know that.
Striving to be as healthy as you can be in the state you are in, that is all I ask of you. Progress, not perfection. When you are too sick to exercise, you rest. And you are as healthy as you can be at that time. You are not injuring yourself and making yourself sicker. The same goes for your mental health. Accept your limitations. Yes, push your boundaries but recognize there are limits. And some of those limits are fixed. And that has to be acceptable. You can not like it, but you must accept it.
*He gestures forward as though towards a scene before us.*
You don't have to like what you see. I'm not asking for that. But you can not torture yourself for seeing things you do not like. And you can not look away from them, because that is dangerous for you. Ignoring your weaknesses leads to you over exerting yourself and to you hurting yourself, which turns into a vicious cycle of this which is supposed to, in some strange, twisted way, compensate for the weakness. Cutting your hamstrings because you can not run and then trying to force yourself to walk with them cut is not going to help you or do you any good. It will only aggravate the problem, worsen your condition, and potentially render you completely incapable of what you're attempting to do.
me: I can't exactly help it.
*He frowns.*
Ingvi: Now don't lie to yourself like that. Or to me. You can help it, but it is very difficult for you. You have been trained to do this to yourself. You can break that training. You have broken much of that sort of training. Once, you wouldn't eat a proper meal. It took you years but you now eat when you are hungry, except for when you are not in your right mind. If you can break the conditioning to starve yourself, you can break the conditioning to tear yourself down when you are not feeling well.
You don't hate yourself. You love yourself very much but you act like you hate yourself because that was what you were taught to do as self love. You wouldn't do this to your children. You would take care of them when they didn't feel well and handle them gently when they were feeling fragile. You would nurse their injuries until they were well enough to go on. You must do this for yourself as well.
I love you. You love you. Now act like it.
