Monday musing: On Labor
work is still work even when it don't feel like it
Well, well, well. Here we are again, by God’s grace.
So, I shared a bit about my summer in San Fransico. This was supposed to be THE summer. Y’know? the one where I was gonna “fix” my finances, upgrade my wardrobe, and make some West Coast connections within my vocation. I’m not saying these things didn’t happen — I was more successful with some goals than others. We gon’ keep trying financially, but wardrobe did get some upgrades, and I met some really cool faithful queers (some of whom I owe emails! - reminder to self).
Giiiiirrrl. But then, life got to life-ing — as she does. Nothing new there. But the way life remixes and masters the “life-ing” is just… I have no words. It’s never the same curve ball - y’know?
The Body Keeps the Score
So, skipping over many details, I found myself in an inpatient facility by the end of the summer. I didn’t finish out the fellowship because I was unwell. I checked myself in, chile, cuz I was bout to do something — idk what, flip a table or punt a baby… or something — that I would likely regret. By virtue of a series of unfortunate events, life had me backed against a wall, and I was about to do something drastic to get out.
I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly anxious person, but anxiety comes part and parcel with Major Depressive Disorder.
Two or three weeks after arriving in SF, a strange rash appeared on my stomach right next to my belly button. Naturally, I took a picture of it and sent it to my mom, a Registered Nurse. She told me to put some antibiotic ointment on it and keep it clean. Mom is good for triage. So that’s what I did. And after about a week, the rash was gone, but left a gnarly, discolored scar on my almond-colored flesh. It looked like I had been burned with something. I was like “hmm, that was weird” and kept it pushin’.
A week or two later, I was going for my routine lil’ jog down the beach, and my chest is tight and i’m short of breath. It’s not like I’m new to exercise. I had done this jog before. Never experienced this. I sit on a bench, the wind from the nearby waves rushing over me, reassuring me that lack of oxygen was not the problem. My chest is on fire as I’m trying to catch my breath. I’m like, ok, maybe I need to catch my breath? I did some stretches and tried to pick up the pace again. No - chest still tight; I still can’t breathe. I go home.
This happens on a Thursday. I work remotely on Fridays, then there’s the weekend. I didn’t have any plans that weekend, luckily. And I started to notice that even moving around the house is becoming challenging — shortness of breath, chest tightening. I can’t even do laundry comfortably. Tried to walk down the block to the 7/11, same thing.
Monday rolls around. I’m like, ok, I have to go to work. Duh.
I STRUGGLE to the train stop that is literally around the corner from my sublet. Catch my breath on the train, get to my stop. It’s a 2-block walk to the office, that’s usually pretty pleasant, as walks to work go. That was the longest two blocks of my life. I get to the office, and immediately go to the bathroom because I’m a sweaty, panting mess.
That day, I have to leave early. My supervisor drives me to urgent care. I’m crying, still panting, losing my shit. I have never experienced this before.
The nurse at urgent care checks my vitals, breath sounds, allat… She’s like “I’m so sorry. There’s no reason, from what we can tell, that you would be having these issues.” Thanks, urgent care. (Not for nothing, the nurse practitioner had an amazing bedside manner. She looked me in the eye, and was very affirming that she believed me that something was wrong, she just didn’t know what.)
That was the beginning of the end of my time in SF. Within a week, I was on a plane en route back to Princeton.
I’ve never experienced anxiety to the point that I would be having chest pains. I thought I was having a heart attack or something. Mom told me, heart problems manifest differently in “women” than they do in “men.”
But my body was acutely aware of all the stressors that I had been trying to hold at bay. And even the ones I was unaware of.
So, today is Labor Day, right? The day workers are supposed to get a break and “be celebrated.”
In recent years, baby millennials and Gen Z have made it very clear what we think about work. We don’t wanna. Because: overwork, burnout, exploitation, all the things. We don’t dream of labor. The girlies are calling for a “soft life.” And the boomers are mad about it.
“I had to work, so y’all should have to work” type shit.
As a nigga with an academic background and a little bit of organizing experience, I could talk your ear off about Marx and late-stage capitalism and abolition. I know the things. And I’ve tried to cultivate a life where my work “becomes a conscious decision - a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered.”1 Word to Audre Lorde.
Over the past year, I have accomplished a great deal of spirit-filled work. From my own studies and scholarship to teaching in a prison, working on the farm, and building a community of support that I am truly proud of. And yet…
In an inpatient facility, there’s not much to do besides sit and think. No phones, barely any television, and journaling, lots of journaling.
And it dawned on me that I hadn’t actually taken a pause since I left NYC. Don’t get me wrong, leaving NYC felt like a HUGE exhale. And the farm was such a gentle place to land: it provided a welcome respite, one that offered a kind of sensory rest, as it was quieter and allowed for a slower pace of living. However, I never really took an intentional pause to do nothing. The work that I’ve had the privilege to embark on in the last year was spiritually rejuvenating and energizing, but physically, I was still running at a deficit.
I know now that I am a highly sensitive person (HSP), and that city environments do not do my body good. HSP was the language the intake nurse gave me to describe the acute, but sometimes benign, overwhelm that I was experiencing as I recounted the story of how I’d come to be sitting in front of him. A young, 30-something, Jewish man who wore a kippah and Tzitzit hanging at his waist — he reminds me of someone, a friend from high school that I remember fondly.
I suppose that makes sense, considering where and how I was born and raised. My childhood was filled with quiet time, time alone, and time spent surrounded by nature, time to be bored. Sensory processing-wise, my nervous system was not equipped for the immense sensory input of living in a big, loud city like New York.
Nevertheless, even work that doesn’t feel like “labor” (in the Marxist sense) is still “work” (in the scientific sense of the word, i.e., W(work) = F (force) x d (distance)). **for the girlies who paid attention in Physics
This summer, I was doing more spirit-filled work! Designing ecologically focused climate change curriculum for kids, working with kids, working with teenagers, learning about different ecologies and landscapes, and getting to explore this giant, beautiful, botanical garden every day. I think there’s a way that spirit-filled work can fuel our bodies past their physical limits, in really profound ways. There’s a passage in Melanie Harris’s Ecowomanism, where she retells the story of an enslaved woman taking a rest under a sycamore tree and waking up, able to carry on her tasks. The point of the passage is to speak to the ways that God has restored Black women through nature throughout time, equipping Black women to continue on in the face of violence and desolation.... Yet and still, as spiritually restoring as the work was, my body was groaning for a pause.
This, fellow traveler, is the end of my tale.
Ultimately, the decision to check myself in came down to a couple of factors, most of them socioeconomic in nature.
a. I was beginning to have trouble doing tasks like cooking for myself and cleaning. That’s usually how the warning signs of worsening mental state begin to manifest: Daily tasks become a struggle, and I’m before I know it, I’m spending money that I need on takeout, and living in clutter. If I checked myself in, I would have three meals that I didn’t have to prepare (that were actually pretty decent!). The space would be clean and maintained by staff — another thing off my plate. And a psychiatrist and I could safely adjust my meds to figure out what worked under the constant supervision of professionals. I could finally be alone with my thoughts and focus on doing… nothing. I could quiet the noise. I could disappear… temporarily.
b. Inpatient means being off the grid. Most facilities do not allow patients to have their phones. My phone is a constant source of sensory input that, in times when I’m not doing well, becomes acutely distressing. So, it’s a built-in mandatory screen break.
c. It’s covered on my insurance. Student insurance for the win! Now, here’s where we get into the conversation about class and access to resources. I count it a blessing that at this point in my life, I’m accountable only for myself. I couldn’t imagine having little ones and having to figure out what to do with them in addition to everything else. And…
Doing all the things I need to take care of myself… consistently(!) — is no small task, especially when going through a depressive episode.
Since I’ve returned to my apartment, I dug into a text that the TA had talked about in his lecture on the last day of a class called The Minister and Mental Illness.
In the book, The Burnout Society, Byung-Chul Han writes:
“...21st century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society. Also, its inhabitants are no longer “obedience-subjects” but “achievement-subjects”
In 21st-century society, we have become both the exploited and the exploiter. There’s no master cracking a whip over our heads, ordering us to work. We just work because the order of society dictates that we must work, that we must labor, in order to have the things we need.
Now, let’s be real, an all-inclusive vacation/getaway for a week in the desert, or Tulum, or somewhere with little to no cell service would have been far preferable to checking myself into a behavioral facility whereby I am consenting to being locked in an indoor space drowning in flourescent light 24/7, under constant surveillance (of some very lovely and down to earth staff!), with other patients dealing with varying iterations of their own mental health/substance use shit. The only writing utensils we have access to are felt-tip markers and rubber ink-pens that write in boldface. (Which is particularly unsatisfactory to me because I am SUCH a penmanship nerd. I love calligraphy and shit. I prefer to write with 0.5mm ballpoint pens, specifically UniBall or G2 brands. If the line spacing is wide enough, I can make a 0.7mm work. And I prefer to buy journals with thicker paper quality and narrower line spacing because my natural handwriting is kinda small and scribbly, so I think it looks less visually appealing because it doesn’t take up as much white-space on the page. Anyway, I digress).
The point is: All this shit is fucked. Period. And in this moment, in this here and now — while still holding on to the hope that those abolition dreams come true one day, so that we can turn to each other and not be beholden to bureaucracies and systems to sustain the care we need — we have to do what we have to do, with what we have.
For better or worse.
All the while trusting that “God’s grace is sufficient for me” (2 Cor 12:9), through the twisting and turning.
Joys and Gratitudes
1. Summer Heat
One thing that also really threw my body completely off was the cold. It was very cold in Forks, Washington, on many days. My body has never experienced a cold summer. My therapist and I hypothesized that there could also have been a kind of seasonal affective response triggered by the weather.
I never thought I’d miss East Coast heat. I’m so grateful to be able to step out of an air-conditioned apartment to thaw out and take a walk down a scenic trail just about the back of my apartment complex. I’m so grateful to feel the warmth of summer.
2. My Reading Chair
During my stay “away,” I brought several books to occupy my free time. There was a lot of that. I forgot how much I loved reading. It’s wild because I read professionally/vocationally all the time. But, like, the experience of picking up a book in your hands and reading the words on the page to the rhythm in my head — ugh! *chef’s kiss*
Grateful for great books, written by great writers, that keep me company in the lowest times.
Grateful for a great chair and great friends who have furniture to get rid of when they graduate and move away.
3. Support system
By God’s grace, I have found some beautiful humans in this Princeton place, and even some longer-standing friendships from my time in NYC. These are my support networks. My chosen family. Who may not have all they need either, but who really pull up for a bitch when they goin’ through. Friends who’ve helped me pay my rent, get my car out of the shop, Venmoed, and cashapped. Who picked me up from the airport, paid for my dinner, split an Uber, bought my drinks, and even swallowed an eighth of weed when I got pulled over by the cops in college. (Another story for another day, but shout out to my girl Reu!).
One of these friends is a newly minted Ph.d in the History of Gender and Socialism that I met when I lived in the Bronx. I remember having conversations over dollar slices (well, 3.25, but nothing costs a dollar anymore fr) about the queerness of queer life — the twisting and turning, the small, mundane miracles that keep us fed and loved.
To me, being accountable to them and loving them meant doing what I needed to do to take care of myself, despite the limitations.
Land that sustains me
Left to right: delicatta squash, dino kale, 4 eggplant, 4 butternut squash, garlic and some peppers
Benediction
A benediction is an utterance or formula of blessing, good wishes, or a prayer for divine help, often at the end of a religious service or ceremony, invoking divine favor, peace, and blessing on the people or things being blessed. The word comes from Latin words meaning "to speak well of"
My devotional time brought me to Proverbs 16:3 this week: Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and they will establish your plans.
Pause. Reflect.
What does it look like to commit the work of my (our) healing to the Lord?
Liberation work is just as much about interrogating “the speck in my own eye” as it is about critiquing “the log” in my oppressor’s eye… lest I, eventually, become the oppressor. (what Fanon said, kinda)
God that fills my (our) living with purpose,
I awe at the work of the spirit alight in the world
I thank you that you are a God that persists with me (us)
I thank you that your Spirit is incarnate in the small places God,
I repent for the times I lost sight of you in the name of work.
Help me to remember your unchanging hand, and constant provision.
Help me commit my healing to you. This is my prayer.
Amen and asé.
Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic
That benediction, wow wow wow ty!! glad you are taking care how you can