This is not me — and that’s OK. (Photo courtesy of Flickr user RelaxingMusic)
I sleep like a weirdo.
Or, should I say, I fall asleep like a weirdo, sprawled out diagonally in my double bed in what must look like the most uncomfortable of positions: I whip my leg over and sort of tuck my arm under it and do a little back-twisting and stretching, hooking my other leg over the end of my mattress and — hey, you know what, it feels great and I fall asleep almost instantly.
God help me when I have to learn to share the bed.
All this to say, as I stretched and then settled into my I-swear-to-God-it’s-comfortable pretzel shape last night, I had a thought. If stretching like that feels so great before I fall asleep, maybe I should do a nighttime yoga routine before I go to bed.
And then I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to be the kind of person who has a nighttime yoga routine?”
Which, of course, is where I started to beat myself up about not having a nighttime yoga routine, about being “the kind of person who,” instead of cooking dinner, sometimes goes out for a drink with a friend and intends to stick to one beer but has two and then just wants to go to bed at 9:30 p.m. instead of doing the dishes sitting in the sink or packing lunch for tomorrow’s workday.
Or about being “the kind of person who” checks Twitter or Instagram on her phone during TV commercials instead of doing planks or sit-ups or jumping jacks and foregoing rock-hard abs and other grand levels of fitness that come, apparently, from four-minute bursts of exercise.
The times when I am “the kind of person who” would efficiently grocery shop, make a homemade dinner, do a load of laundry, clear the sink of dishes, read for an hour and then wash my face of make-up and lay out my clothes for the next day — well, those are few and far between. Oftentimes, I translate this into “I’m not a grown-up,” or “I’m failing at being responsible.”
Which, ladies, is ridiculous.
I find myself trying to measure up to a standard that no one has even set for me — to be “the kind of person who” always has her act together, who doesn’t rely on frozen pizza sometimes for dinner and who most certainly does not Febreeze her dry-clean-only blazer.
Who is this fictional woman I am trying to imitate? The women I know — wives, moms and single ladies — are all a little off-kilter most of the time, and you know what? It makes them real, and it makes them easy to relate to. It allows us to get to know each other on a level where, hey, it really doesn’t matter if that’s a cobweb in the corner because you haven’t dusted in three weeks, because I am focused on spending time with you, my friend, not you, the Robotic Cleaning Woman Whose Home Is Forever Dust-Free.
I’m not “the kind of person who” would have a nighttime yoga routine. I’m the kind of person who is willing to, every so often, cut myself some slack, twist into a pretzel and just head to bed.
