The Ups and Downs of Knowing Your Limits

It’s been months since my last post. I haven’t really felt like I have anything to say, or if I do, it’s in the form of a song or a story. And I promise, there’s movement on the album and the novel. But recently I realized I did have something I wanted to say, and it wasn’t going to fit neatly into either format. So here I am, back in the blog.

My younger self didn’t know what my limits were. She would go running past them and get pulled back, sometimes quite violently. If I thought about them at all, at the time, I think I just assumed my limits would be the same as those of the people around me.¹ My peers, my family, my mentors. Or at least, what I believed to be the limits of others.

I did a lot of damage, to myself and to my relationships, by failing to understand my own limits. I did not give myself a chance to choose when to rest, and rest was repeatedly thrust upon me by my exhausted brain.

I’ve learned a lot about my limits in the last few years.² I’ve learned where many of them lie, and something about why that might be. I drew myself a safe little circle that sits just inside those limits, and I’ve done some healing thanks to staying inside it for a while. But at the same time, these limits have kept me from doing things that I really want to, or should, be doing for the sake of my general health. Leaving the apartment. Socializing. Exercising. Eating healthier.

The thing is, when you know where your limits are and try to stay inside them because, hey, that’s a more comfortable way to live, your world shrinks. You have to draw back again and again to avoid contact with those boundaries.

So, ignoring my limits leaves me burnt out and struggling while treating them respectfully leaves me in an ever-shrinking world. I do think there is a happy medium, though, which I’m trying to perfect these days. And it’s this: stretch. Instead of racing past my limits or letting them restrain me, I’m trying to cautiously push them just until I feel the stretch. Keep them flexible. 

What does this actually look like? In the area of leaving my apartment, for example, it may mean timing it carefully to avoid the school and work rushes. It may mean remembering my sunglasses, using my phone to navigate even a route I know well, or taking the dog with me even if it’s just to check the mail. It may mean getting Adam to take me someplace I could theoretically go by myself. In other words, what I do is think of accommodations to render things that would otherwise be outside my limits just that little bit more manageable.

I’d say “that’s all it takes,” but it’s really not a “that’s all” situation. It takes deep knowledge of self, a struggle for the ever-elusive motivation, and a willingness to tell off ableism whenever it comes around.

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¹ Spoiler alert: they are not.

² The isolation era of COVID helped with that.