The last time I felt completely relaxed was one and a half years ago. Due to a complicated chain of events that I can’t now be bothered to go into, I was staying with a university friend and his parents. I was being fed, housed, amused. I slept in a comfortable white-sheeted bed. I walked twenty minutes to work and five minutes to church. Regarding future plans, I’d fallen into the exact job I needed. After a summer of horrible, grinding insecurity, it was bliss. For two weeks I was comprehensively, deliciously, looked after, and I let myself enjoy it.
Have I really not felt relaxed since then? Apparently not. I was moving house, and then I was unpacking, and then I was ill. I’ve been feeling very well over the past week or so, but it’s been the sort of bubbling glowiness that I get when I’m coming out of depression. Wonderful, but not at all relaxing.
I am not very good at looking after myself. When other people look after me it’s lovely (depending, of course, on the people), and I am learning how to accept it graciously (again, depending on the people), but – well. It is all very well for me to collapse on the sofa, but first I have to take all the books off it. And the fact that the books got there in the first place, and have remained there, is probably a sign that I should have been looking after myself better. There. It is so very easy for it to become another ‘should’.
Kathleen Jowitt 