I Don’t Have the Bandwidth for This Today

What happens when the woman who always handles everything finally stops? Apparently, everyone gets confused.

I think some of us spend our whole lives waiting for the moment when we finally arrive.

You know the one—the moment when you finally know who you are, what you want, how to get it and where you’re going. When all the years of surviving, building, fixing and figuring shit out finally pay off.

I thought arriving would feel like peace.

Instead, I feel exhausted.

Not the kind of exhausted that a good sleep fixes. I’m talking about the kind that lives in your soul. The kind that quietly sucks the life out of you and somehow still shows up on a good day. The kind that comes from trying—trying to keep everything together, trying to remain functional and trying to appear fine when what you really want to do is crawl into a hole, pull a blanket over your head and sleep until nobody needs anything from you.

From the outside, I look productive. Functional. In fact, I might even look like I’m thriving.

But the truth is, I’m not fine.

I’m exhausted from being the person who gets things done.

The Person Everyone Calls

My exhaustion doesn’t always arrive through one enormous crisis. It shows up through dozens of little agreements.

I agree to help someone. I write the letter. I babysit my grandson. I make the call. I do the shopping. I take care of the thing somebody else forgot—or avoided—or simply didn’t feel like doing.

I have had kids, partners and friends ask me for help, then sit on their phones or wander off to do something else while I complete the work they asked me to “help” with.

That isn’t helping, by the way.

That is outsourcing your life to me while you scroll Facebook.

And I did it. Again and again.

Now I look back at some of those moments and shake my head. What was I thinking? Why would anyone believe this was okay?

The uncomfortable answer is: because I made it okay.

I kept saying yes. I kept stepping in. I kept finishing the job. I showed the people around me that if they struggled loudly enough, waited long enough or simply handed me the problem, I would take care of it.

What began as helping became doing.

What began as gratitude became expectation.

And somewhere along the way, my exhaustion became the price of everyone else’s convenience.

I’m not willing to pay it anymore.

When Love Becomes Rescue

There is someone in my life who repeatedly makes the same choices. He believes he can outsmart systems, ignore the rules and somehow avoid the inevitable consequences. Each time, he gets himself a little further into trouble.

Historically, I have been the person he turns to when everything falls apart.

I listen. I worry. I help. I absorb the stress. I try to fix what I didn’t break. Then, eventually, we repeat the whole damn cycle.

This time, I stopped.

I said, “You did this. You figure it out. And I don’t want to hear about it because it causes me stress.”

To him, that boundary feels like abandonment. It feels like a lack of love.

I can understand why.

When someone has always experienced your rescuing as love, your refusal to rescue them can feel like rejection. When you have protected a person from consequences for years, accountability probably does feel rather cold.

But discomfort is not abandonment.

And refusing to protect a grown adult from the consequences of his own repeated choices is not a lack of love. Sometimes it is simply grow-up time.

Perhaps love is not continually saving someone from the same fire while they keep playing with matches.

Perhaps love can also sound like this:

I love you, but I will not help you do this to yourself—or to me—again.

His choices belong to him. The consequences belong to him. The stress does not have to belong to me.

Apparently, I’m the Problem Now

It is surprising how people react when you make yourself emotionally unavailable for their crap.

For years, you can give your time, energy, money, attention and peace away. You can answer every call, solve every problem and pick up every dropped responsibility.

Then one day you say, “I don’t have the bandwidth for this today,” and suddenly you have changed.

You are selfish.

You are distant.

You don’t care anymore.

It’s funny how nobody notices the hundred times you showed up. They notice only the first time you don’t.

And yes, I have changed.

I had to.

The woman everyone relied on is exhausted, burned out and, quite honestly, tired of everyone’s bullshit.

So recently, I have stopped.

I have stopped helping. Stopped doing. Stopped investing every available piece of myself into other people’s lives.

I’m not saying I don’t love them. I’m saying: not my circus, not my monkeys. Fix it yourself. Do it yourself.

Do your dishes. Cook your food. Do your shopping. Write your letter. Make your call. And, most importantly, take care of your own shit.

Apparently some people can’t fill their own cup unless I also boil the water, find the cup, pour it and remind them to drink—but I’m retiring from that position.

My new saying is:

“I Don’t Have the Bandwidth for This Today.”

And I have to tell you, it is invigorating to take yourself back from other people.

I’m not sure they find it equally invigorating.

Surprisingly, I don’t care.

Not because I don’t care about them, but because their disappointment is not proof that my boundary is wrong. Their frustration may simply mean the boundary is doing exactly what it was designed to do: preventing their responsibility from becoming mine.

Something I have learned at almost 60 is that when you are the one doing everything, no one notices what you carry until you put it down.

No one thinks to help the strong one because the strong one has created the illusion that she doesn’t need support. I helped create that person. I taught everyone—including myself—that I could manage it all.

But being capable of carrying everything does not mean I should.

Taking responsibility for my part in this pattern is not the same as blaming myself. It is where my power is. If I helped make this arrangement normal, I can stop participating in it.

Coming Home to Myself

Home is where I need to be right now.

Not merely inside my house, but home with myself.

I need warm baths. Quiet rooms. Time to breathe. Time when nothing is playing in the background and nobody is asking me to solve something. I don’t need to fill every minute with noise.

My nervous system needs to learn that silence is safe.

My soul needs time to heal, because I have discovered that she is scarred and bruised.

She needs love and nurturing. She needs support. Sometimes she needs time to cry—time to come to terms with everything she has carried.

It is okay not to be there for everyone else.

It is okay to say, “Not today.”

It is okay to set a boundary even when someone else interprets it as a lack of love.

It is okay to put my soul first. To take care of her. To nourish her. To finally give her some of what I have spent a lifetime giving away.

Maybe the people I love will learn to take care of themselves.

Maybe one day they will understand that they took me for granted. Maybe they will realize that while depending on me for everything, they forgot that I needed something from them too.

But their understanding cannot be the condition of my healing.

They may understand one day, or they may not.

Either way, I am coming home to myself.

From my beautifully chaotic life to yours,
Fina
Veni, vidi, vici.