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Ramadan Day 16
Mar. 26th, 2024 10:06 pmSo weird to be past the midway point of this month. Also very weird to be noticing my hunger cues and what I am able to cope with in my generally sedentary tasks only to be reminded of what Palestinian's in Gaza are feeling when their hunger extends beyond their fast, when the day demands more of them than my desk work does. It's certainly been a day. I wasn't necessarily as busy as I wanted to be today but I did something I haven't properly done in many many weeks of exhaustion: I went outside and took a walk. Not speed walking to a meeting or a protest or a meet up. Just a walk, just for me, listening to a dnd podcast, taking deep breaths for about 30 minutes. I could have stayed out for hours if I didn't have other deadlines to work towards. Definitely a reminder to me of the ways I had been taking care of myself that have fallen off the wagon. And the gratitude of being able to get back on.
I got news today after several tests resulted back normal that the high blood pressure that I've had since the summer, which should have resolved in the fall after stopping a medication, is probably persisting because of stress. Of course, that came with a healthy dose of ignoring the elephant in the room from the provider I saw who named my coursework stress as the primary cause despite me stating clearly that my student stress is lighter this year, my global politics stress is immensely heavy. There's something so fundamentally tiring about having people ignore a genocide as a very real stressor? Makes me want to shake someone because it truly has me feeling out of my damn mind for that split second interaction. Sitting in the room wondering, didn't I just say school is not my main stressor this year? Did I not just say that the state of the world is what is weighing (quite literally) on my heart? Feels like going mad. There's a book on that (How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity) that I'm meaning to eventually buy a copy of so I can work through it slowly and with markup.
Was reading the same poetry book today while waiting and this snippet landed for me:
I got news today after several tests resulted back normal that the high blood pressure that I've had since the summer, which should have resolved in the fall after stopping a medication, is probably persisting because of stress. Of course, that came with a healthy dose of ignoring the elephant in the room from the provider I saw who named my coursework stress as the primary cause despite me stating clearly that my student stress is lighter this year, my global politics stress is immensely heavy. There's something so fundamentally tiring about having people ignore a genocide as a very real stressor? Makes me want to shake someone because it truly has me feeling out of my damn mind for that split second interaction. Sitting in the room wondering, didn't I just say school is not my main stressor this year? Did I not just say that the state of the world is what is weighing (quite literally) on my heart? Feels like going mad. There's a book on that (How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity) that I'm meaning to eventually buy a copy of so I can work through it slowly and with markup.
Was reading the same poetry book today while waiting and this snippet landed for me:
