Kate Didd

Day:107

Today I did not feel good. Not even a little bit. I think I hit a wall, and honestly, I don’t know how much fuel I have left before I completely crash.

I woke up exhausted. The kind of exhausted where all I wanted to do was roll over and disappear into the sheets. No gym. And that made me sad, genuinely sad because I know how much I’ve poured into this last week, and some part of me still wants to punish myself for not having the strength today. But I also know what happens when I don’t listen. I pushed myself earlier this week and it hurt me. So today I had a choice: discipline or my heart. And today, I chose my heart.

It felt strange to let the day go. My stomach was aching and I couldn’t figure out why. I just got off my cycle, so it’s not that. Can’t be pregnant, I had my tubes tied after my youngest. So I did what I do now, what I’ve gotten so good at doing since I started really listening to this body of mine: I went part by part, checking in, trying to find the source. And then I remembered, the stitches. The lidocaine. Anything you put in your body, you give it three days of grace. Preservatives included.

So there I was, talking myself off my own mental cliff. You’re not sick. You’re burnt out. You’ve had a little trauma. You’re working your ass off for everything you want. I had zero interest in work today. I still did it well, because that’s just what I do, but underneath it I was hollow, sitting quiet in a corner, playing video games, unable to give anything real of myself. And with the end of this braces journey so close, I felt a little defeated on top of it all.

But here’s the thing I keep coming back to, the thing that makes today survivable. I don’t worry about what I’m coming home to. I know exactly what’s waiting for me, and it is perfection.

It’s such a strange kind of relief, letting go of my own discipline for a day, because I know his is holding the line for both of us. His consistency is the thing keeping me upright when mine gives out. It’s a ritual at this point, the water he sets out without being asked, the massage table pulled out like clockwork, the flowers, the way he brushes my hair and tucks me gently into bed. I used to crash so much harder than this. I think the burnout doesn’t hit the way it used to because of him because of the sheer, quiet consistency of how soft and gentle he loves me, night after night, whether I’m at my best or completely wrung out. He won’t let me fall that far. He never has.

And tonight, lying here, I found myself thinking about how hard we worked to get here. The history. The ups, the downs, the years of working through the tough stuff. Even the separation, the one that felt like the whole world was ending, like nothing would ever be right again. All of it. Every hard, brutal, uncertain piece of it was worth it to end up here, with this man in front of me. Mine since I was sixteen years old. I feel like we’ve lived more than one lifetime together, I think this might be our third. And I don’t know how I know that, I just do. I believe now that I’ll find him in every lifetime. I believed it before, too. I think I just lost faith in it for a moment, somewhere in the hard years. But it never stopped being true.

It’s just a hard day. It’ll be okay. It has to be. I’ve fallen before and picked myself back up. I always do. And tonight, in about five minutes, I’m going to let him tuck me in, the same way he does every night, the same way that’s brought me back from the edge more times than I can count.

Good night.