Can you help me with taking off the mask that I wear all the time?
June 28, 2024 5:04 AM Subscribe
I am looking for advice, resources, whatever to help me understand and heal deep issues of self-worth that have plagued my life for long enough.
I am in therapy with a good therapist and part of me homework this month is to identify a particular pattern involving my kid and what triggers me to get overly emotional. I have identified that the way I act is frustrated and the triggers are lack of focus, adherence to routines, lack of effort and being scared to take a risk. I know she is a great kid and she gets tons of love from me, but this stuff triggers something emotionally within me that I don't love.
And what I have realized is this is all stuff I internalized about myself as a kid and that deep down it makes me unlovable and worthless. We moved around a lot as a kid and when we finally settled in late Elementary School, I experienced a ton of rejection when we got to Junior High, particularly romantically. I also had undiagnosed ADHD that showed up on every report card as "a very smart kid who isn't achieving his potential." I grew up in an intensely stressful household (deeply poor) with a mother who openly resented my father for all our troubles and I coped by being somewhere else. So I spent a lot of eleven-years old and on either alone in my room fantasizing about what life would be like as a better version of myself (i.e., a sports star or famous musician) or out roaming and getting into trouble. The time I spent in my home I think I tended towards appeasing my mother so the house wouldn't feel so damn stressful all the time.
I think in this period I internalized that nobody could love me as I was and that I had to hide that person away and become someone else. I became very, very good at masking and covering things up - my parents, as an example, had no idea how much drinking, drugs and sexually risky stuff I did while I lived in their home. They think I was an obedient, good kid.
I found ways to get the romantic validation I craved and to make friends - but nothing ever lasted and I realize now it was because I was terrified of anyone getting too close and seeing the mask that I am always wearing. I also figured out that if I was serving other people's needs and ignoring my own, that people really like that - but at some point I get burnt out and resentful that my unspoken needs weren't satisfied. So I have a long string of relationships, jobs, and friendships that were intensely good for a few months and a couple of years later were completely gone from my life - usually because I ran away towards something else that gave me more validation or because I blew it up on the idea they were on to me.
And now, in my 40s, with a job, and a kid, a marriage, and a bunch of adult responsibilities - I feel like I am struggling under the weight of the mask. I feel like I've been such a fraud for so long that I don't even know who I really am anymore. In the evening when my kid goes to bed, I often binge eat (never feeling full), dissociate with media, and I try to keep myself constantly occupied and busy. I feel more empty than actively bad most of the time.
I still find myself wanting the validation of romantic interest (not acting on it but just...wanting to be flirted with enough to convince myself I'm worthy) in a way that makes me feel like a bad partner. The patterns where I get triggered by my kid lead to me being a less-than-helpful father. I have days at work where I can't get anything done because I am stuck in a self-worth spiral. And it feels overwhelming to have built these patterns over like 30 years and part of me feels like I'm never going to be able to break them. I don't remember a period where I wasn't trying to be someone I am not it has been so long.
And I plan on discussing all of this with my therapist, but I am looking for anything that resonates and that worked for you around building more self-worth on a deeper emotional level. Cognitively I have been through enough therapy to know that a lot of the things I feel aren't true, but no amount of intellectualizing has gotten through to making me feel better yet. It could be some concepts or schemas, a book you read, or even your lived experience of having found your way to the other side.
Thanks in advance for reading my ramblings and any thoughts you have.
I am in therapy with a good therapist and part of me homework this month is to identify a particular pattern involving my kid and what triggers me to get overly emotional. I have identified that the way I act is frustrated and the triggers are lack of focus, adherence to routines, lack of effort and being scared to take a risk. I know she is a great kid and she gets tons of love from me, but this stuff triggers something emotionally within me that I don't love.
And what I have realized is this is all stuff I internalized about myself as a kid and that deep down it makes me unlovable and worthless. We moved around a lot as a kid and when we finally settled in late Elementary School, I experienced a ton of rejection when we got to Junior High, particularly romantically. I also had undiagnosed ADHD that showed up on every report card as "a very smart kid who isn't achieving his potential." I grew up in an intensely stressful household (deeply poor) with a mother who openly resented my father for all our troubles and I coped by being somewhere else. So I spent a lot of eleven-years old and on either alone in my room fantasizing about what life would be like as a better version of myself (i.e., a sports star or famous musician) or out roaming and getting into trouble. The time I spent in my home I think I tended towards appeasing my mother so the house wouldn't feel so damn stressful all the time.
I think in this period I internalized that nobody could love me as I was and that I had to hide that person away and become someone else. I became very, very good at masking and covering things up - my parents, as an example, had no idea how much drinking, drugs and sexually risky stuff I did while I lived in their home. They think I was an obedient, good kid.
I found ways to get the romantic validation I craved and to make friends - but nothing ever lasted and I realize now it was because I was terrified of anyone getting too close and seeing the mask that I am always wearing. I also figured out that if I was serving other people's needs and ignoring my own, that people really like that - but at some point I get burnt out and resentful that my unspoken needs weren't satisfied. So I have a long string of relationships, jobs, and friendships that were intensely good for a few months and a couple of years later were completely gone from my life - usually because I ran away towards something else that gave me more validation or because I blew it up on the idea they were on to me.
And now, in my 40s, with a job, and a kid, a marriage, and a bunch of adult responsibilities - I feel like I am struggling under the weight of the mask. I feel like I've been such a fraud for so long that I don't even know who I really am anymore. In the evening when my kid goes to bed, I often binge eat (never feeling full), dissociate with media, and I try to keep myself constantly occupied and busy. I feel more empty than actively bad most of the time.
I still find myself wanting the validation of romantic interest (not acting on it but just...wanting to be flirted with enough to convince myself I'm worthy) in a way that makes me feel like a bad partner. The patterns where I get triggered by my kid lead to me being a less-than-helpful father. I have days at work where I can't get anything done because I am stuck in a self-worth spiral. And it feels overwhelming to have built these patterns over like 30 years and part of me feels like I'm never going to be able to break them. I don't remember a period where I wasn't trying to be someone I am not it has been so long.
And I plan on discussing all of this with my therapist, but I am looking for anything that resonates and that worked for you around building more self-worth on a deeper emotional level. Cognitively I have been through enough therapy to know that a lot of the things I feel aren't true, but no amount of intellectualizing has gotten through to making me feel better yet. It could be some concepts or schemas, a book you read, or even your lived experience of having found your way to the other side.
Thanks in advance for reading my ramblings and any thoughts you have.
I feel like I am struggling under the weight of the mask. I feel like I've been such a fraud for so long that I don't even know who I really am anymore. In the evening when my kid goes to bed, I often binge eat (never feeling full), dissociate with media, and I try to keep myself constantly occupied and busy. I feel more empty than actively bad most of the time.
This all sounds very familiar as someone who has watched their partner struggle with the exact same things as a consequence of his ADHD, also undiagnosed and untreated until adulthood. A lot of this can potentially be traced back to dopamine seeking. ADHD is characterised as much by a profound lack of energy and motivation in adults as it is by having too much energy in children.
So if I were you I would start off by addressing the ADHD. Is it being treated with medication? Is your therapist ADHD-aware and giving you specific help to deal with that? Making sure they're fully aware of your ADHD will get you both further in unpicking the disordered thinking patterns you've picked up from spending so long masking your ADHD.
posted by fight or flight at 5:26 AM on June 28 [3 favorites]
This all sounds very familiar as someone who has watched their partner struggle with the exact same things as a consequence of his ADHD, also undiagnosed and untreated until adulthood. A lot of this can potentially be traced back to dopamine seeking. ADHD is characterised as much by a profound lack of energy and motivation in adults as it is by having too much energy in children.
So if I were you I would start off by addressing the ADHD. Is it being treated with medication? Is your therapist ADHD-aware and giving you specific help to deal with that? Making sure they're fully aware of your ADHD will get you both further in unpicking the disordered thinking patterns you've picked up from spending so long masking your ADHD.
posted by fight or flight at 5:26 AM on June 28 [3 favorites]
I got to the start of your third paragraph and thought "sounds like ADHD", and yep. :)
I'm coming to this as a late-diagnosed autistic person who has been working on "taking the mask off" for the past four years (and am still working on it). Based on my experiences I'll give the following advice:
- Start the processes to get yourself and your kid formal diagnoses. These open doors for reasonable accommodation.
- Learn about the neurodiversity paradigm and start consuming educational media content about ADHD produced by ADHD self-advocates.
- Consider disclosing your ADHD at work and asking for reasonable accommodations. Being open (or even "out and proud") about your own ADHD can help you start unpacking your own internalized ableism, which is a large part of what drives people to mask.
posted by heatherlogan at 5:47 AM on June 28 [3 favorites]
I'm coming to this as a late-diagnosed autistic person who has been working on "taking the mask off" for the past four years (and am still working on it). Based on my experiences I'll give the following advice:
- Start the processes to get yourself and your kid formal diagnoses. These open doors for reasonable accommodation.
- Learn about the neurodiversity paradigm and start consuming educational media content about ADHD produced by ADHD self-advocates.
- Consider disclosing your ADHD at work and asking for reasonable accommodations. Being open (or even "out and proud") about your own ADHD can help you start unpacking your own internalized ableism, which is a large part of what drives people to mask.
posted by heatherlogan at 5:47 AM on June 28 [3 favorites]
The single most healing moment I've had about things along those lines was seeing someone else react to a kid's triggering-to-me behavior with kindness and support. The child, a toddler at the time, deliberately dumped a large bottle of bubble solution on a wood porch, and their parent said, "Oh, the bubbles are all gone now!" in a warm, non-accusatory tone, sprayed down the porch with a hose, and that was it. That's the end of the story. Nobody yelled. Nobody cried. (Except me, later.)
Eventually I found my way to "peaceful parenting" forums, where there's lots more of that same energy to bask in. It's just so lovely to see people actually taking care of their kids in ways I wasn't. It also gives opportunities to kind of mentally role-play making different choices in those moments so you can start to rewrite the script, and to think of how to meaningfully but not overwhelmingly apologize to the child directly after things you wish had gone better.
posted by teremala at 5:47 AM on June 28 [19 favorites]
Eventually I found my way to "peaceful parenting" forums, where there's lots more of that same energy to bask in. It's just so lovely to see people actually taking care of their kids in ways I wasn't. It also gives opportunities to kind of mentally role-play making different choices in those moments so you can start to rewrite the script, and to think of how to meaningfully but not overwhelmingly apologize to the child directly after things you wish had gone better.
posted by teremala at 5:47 AM on June 28 [19 favorites]
One more thing I wanted to add: Spend some time learning about the strengths of ADHD! ADHDers are some of the best people.
posted by heatherlogan at 5:55 AM on June 28 [5 favorites]
posted by heatherlogan at 5:55 AM on June 28 [5 favorites]
Is there any creative outlet you enjoy? Songwriting, writing poems, drawing, writing a novel or screenplay? I would suggest digging into your creativity. It doesn't have to be past-focussed but it could be - maybe you could work through some of the moments in your life when you acted a certain way, and try to pinpoint and flesh out what was going on for you, how others responded, etc. Doing something creative can be a great way to work out past situations.
Creativity can also help people feel validated and gain self-esteem in the present when you create something you like and are proud of. Plus, if you share any of your creative work with others, that can become a source of validation and connection, too, and can help others understand you more deeply.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:51 AM on June 28 [4 favorites]
Creativity can also help people feel validated and gain self-esteem in the present when you create something you like and are proud of. Plus, if you share any of your creative work with others, that can become a source of validation and connection, too, and can help others understand you more deeply.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:51 AM on June 28 [4 favorites]
In cases of trauma (which this is) the masks we wear are like scabs on a wound. The wound heals from the bottom up and when it's ready the mask falls naturally away.
Following up on what teremala said about peaceful parenting, the times when you become frustrated with your kid are also opportunities for you to treat them the way you should have been treated. To make a real statement to yourself and the world that kids deserve help and comfort, and it's not their fault if they don't receive it.
Get enough practice at that and you may even start to believe it about yourself.
-----
It took me years to work with and accept the fact that I didn't get the parenting that all children deserve, primarily because it was clear that my parents worked their asses off to try. As an adult I'm able to see that logistically there was no way it was going to happen, and I can accept that fact with no judgment on my parents. We can only play the hands we're dealt, all of us.
I mention that because our need to honor our parents can be very strong, and dealing with the realities of our childhood can feel like we're attacking them. It doesn't have to be that way.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:55 AM on June 28 [5 favorites]
Following up on what teremala said about peaceful parenting, the times when you become frustrated with your kid are also opportunities for you to treat them the way you should have been treated. To make a real statement to yourself and the world that kids deserve help and comfort, and it's not their fault if they don't receive it.
Get enough practice at that and you may even start to believe it about yourself.
-----
It took me years to work with and accept the fact that I didn't get the parenting that all children deserve, primarily because it was clear that my parents worked their asses off to try. As an adult I'm able to see that logistically there was no way it was going to happen, and I can accept that fact with no judgment on my parents. We can only play the hands we're dealt, all of us.
I mention that because our need to honor our parents can be very strong, and dealing with the realities of our childhood can feel like we're attacking them. It doesn't have to be that way.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:55 AM on June 28 [5 favorites]
The other suggestions of IFS and re-parenting/reaching for parenting resources to help you parent and also re-contextualize your experience of being parented are very good ones, but I'm going to offer you some classic talk therapy pushback on a bit of your narrative:
Junior High, particularly romantically
You have a really painful resentment of something that should not have been happening anyway, and I'm wondering if you went to an especially troubled middle school (like...were there a lot of pregnant 12-year-olds?) that had an inappropriate social landscape, and if so are you sure you're not building a "rejected/missed out" narrative around what was actually systemic trauma? What in the world were kids doing to each other there, and what were adults doing to the kids or not preventing? Developmentally, any sort of "romantic" relationships should have been limited to outliers at the highest grade level; what you expect to see in middle school is a lot of hormones and big feelings and yearning but very little actual intermingling. (And I just gut-checked with some current parents of tweens and got confirmation this is still the way, and about half the cohort is still "ew icky", about 35% confusing/intense feels but no real specific engagement, and 15% Worried About That Kid.)
I guess ultimately I'm asking if - between what sounds like an intensely stressful home life, possibly a fucked-up school culture during puberty, and neurodivergence challenges (especially as I am assuming that at your age your chances of getting appropriately assessed were a very mixed bag as the 90s were a period of rapid improvement in school systems but it was pretty unevenly distributed based on how wealthy a school district/state was) - C-PTSD isn't a player here?
Jessica McCabe of How to ADHD did a livestream not too long ago with a trauma expert, talking about kind of re-coming-to-terms with a traumatic childhood in the wake of her mother's recent death and just having a baby, and starting to realize that her ADHD was overlapping with PTSD in ways she hadn't recognized. Short clip here, link to the full thing in the description.
So...maybe you're getting triggered because you're literally getting triggered.
It seems safe to assume your therapist has no trauma-specific training (many don't) and you should not assume they know what to do with that potential information. I'm lining up first to anti-recommend The Body Keeps The Score (the author is shady), I very much recommend C-PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving as a starting point. I have a big ol' recommended reading list in my profile if you want to see some other recommendations related to IFS and nervous system regulation* and self-esteem, but it feels like you first and foremost need a lifeline to understanding and having tools to process the childhood adversity that's making you not the parent you want to be now.
I have a tentative recommendation for Somatic Experiencing therapy in my big list, but there are a number of physical, body-oriented, nervous-system training methodologies out there, because as you say it's easy to know intellectually what is a flawed perspective, but that doesn't tell your body anything - it will need to be re-trained. You might also look into polyvagal theory and vagus nerve exercises (youtube is my go-to for this).
*And these are how you stop-doing-the-thing in the moment, so it's not a treatment for trauma but is is a form of treatment for being triggered.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:02 AM on June 28 [4 favorites]
Junior High, particularly romantically
You have a really painful resentment of something that should not have been happening anyway, and I'm wondering if you went to an especially troubled middle school (like...were there a lot of pregnant 12-year-olds?) that had an inappropriate social landscape, and if so are you sure you're not building a "rejected/missed out" narrative around what was actually systemic trauma? What in the world were kids doing to each other there, and what were adults doing to the kids or not preventing? Developmentally, any sort of "romantic" relationships should have been limited to outliers at the highest grade level; what you expect to see in middle school is a lot of hormones and big feelings and yearning but very little actual intermingling. (And I just gut-checked with some current parents of tweens and got confirmation this is still the way, and about half the cohort is still "ew icky", about 35% confusing/intense feels but no real specific engagement, and 15% Worried About That Kid.)
I guess ultimately I'm asking if - between what sounds like an intensely stressful home life, possibly a fucked-up school culture during puberty, and neurodivergence challenges (especially as I am assuming that at your age your chances of getting appropriately assessed were a very mixed bag as the 90s were a period of rapid improvement in school systems but it was pretty unevenly distributed based on how wealthy a school district/state was) - C-PTSD isn't a player here?
Jessica McCabe of How to ADHD did a livestream not too long ago with a trauma expert, talking about kind of re-coming-to-terms with a traumatic childhood in the wake of her mother's recent death and just having a baby, and starting to realize that her ADHD was overlapping with PTSD in ways she hadn't recognized. Short clip here, link to the full thing in the description.
So...maybe you're getting triggered because you're literally getting triggered.
It seems safe to assume your therapist has no trauma-specific training (many don't) and you should not assume they know what to do with that potential information. I'm lining up first to anti-recommend The Body Keeps The Score (the author is shady), I very much recommend C-PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving as a starting point. I have a big ol' recommended reading list in my profile if you want to see some other recommendations related to IFS and nervous system regulation* and self-esteem, but it feels like you first and foremost need a lifeline to understanding and having tools to process the childhood adversity that's making you not the parent you want to be now.
I have a tentative recommendation for Somatic Experiencing therapy in my big list, but there are a number of physical, body-oriented, nervous-system training methodologies out there, because as you say it's easy to know intellectually what is a flawed perspective, but that doesn't tell your body anything - it will need to be re-trained. You might also look into polyvagal theory and vagus nerve exercises (youtube is my go-to for this).
*And these are how you stop-doing-the-thing in the moment, so it's not a treatment for trauma but is is a form of treatment for being triggered.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:02 AM on June 28 [4 favorites]
I have days at work where I can't get anything done because I am stuck in a self-worth spiral.
Is this low self-worth --> can't get anything done, or is it ADHD-related executive dysfunction --> can't get anything done --> low self-worth? I have heard many people with ADHD speak about how addressing their ADHD (some with medication, some by other strategies) basically cured their anxiety and depression because their anxiety and depression were being caused by the stress of constantly fighting with their ADHD and blaming themselves.
Another thing you should probably know about is Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria, which is extremely common in ADHDers and may be an angle to understand your friendships/relationships.
To be honest, if you have told your therapist about your ADHD and they have never talked to you about these things, your therapist is not as good as you think and you probably need to replace or at least supplement them with someone who actually knows something about your type of brain.
posted by heatherlogan at 8:58 AM on June 28 [3 favorites]
Is this low self-worth --> can't get anything done, or is it ADHD-related executive dysfunction --> can't get anything done --> low self-worth? I have heard many people with ADHD speak about how addressing their ADHD (some with medication, some by other strategies) basically cured their anxiety and depression because their anxiety and depression were being caused by the stress of constantly fighting with their ADHD and blaming themselves.
Another thing you should probably know about is Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria, which is extremely common in ADHDers and may be an angle to understand your friendships/relationships.
To be honest, if you have told your therapist about your ADHD and they have never talked to you about these things, your therapist is not as good as you think and you probably need to replace or at least supplement them with someone who actually knows something about your type of brain.
posted by heatherlogan at 8:58 AM on June 28 [3 favorites]
I was going to recommend Internal Family Systems, too, but someone already beat me to it. It's not for everyone, but I know a number of people who found it very helpful. It comes from a Jungian therapy tradition, which I myself found very helpful.
I read your Ask several times, and since it's Anonymous I guess you can't respond, but for helpful recommendations, it would be good to know a bit more what you would ideally like to happen in the short term, vs in the grand scheme of things.
What was helpful for me with my self-esteem issues was thinking about what specific changes I wanted to make on a day to day level (in my case it was holding people accountable and feeling entitled to apologies, for someone else it could be accepting complements without deflection, or turning down social engagements); identifying low-stake concrete situations mapping onto that aspiration, where I saw myself reacting in ways that clearly came out of low sense of self-worth; thinking of those low-stake situations as "sandboxes" and practicing reacting differently.
Sometimes it looked literally like imagining that I was not myself, but my friend who would have healthy boundaries / sense of self-worth in that particular arena, and then acting the way she would. Something about "play-acting" someone else worked as a scaffolding technique for me, where it was a) less scary and b) it was somehow more "permissible" for me to react differently than I normally would, because I would be able to access the recognition that when my friend with healthy self-esteem acted in those ways, I didn't find them odd or transgressive.
The more experiences I had of doing things differently, in the sense of acting like someone with a higher self-esteem than I had, and experiencing that nothing bad happened, the easier it was to act that way going forward. And relationally experiencing my preferences or self-presentation validated and respected helped me internalize a higher sense of self-worth. Sort of like Marxist theory if that means anything to you -- I changed the "material base" and the ideological superstructure followed.
posted by virve at 10:21 AM on June 28 [2 favorites]
I read your Ask several times, and since it's Anonymous I guess you can't respond, but for helpful recommendations, it would be good to know a bit more what you would ideally like to happen in the short term, vs in the grand scheme of things.
What was helpful for me with my self-esteem issues was thinking about what specific changes I wanted to make on a day to day level (in my case it was holding people accountable and feeling entitled to apologies, for someone else it could be accepting complements without deflection, or turning down social engagements); identifying low-stake concrete situations mapping onto that aspiration, where I saw myself reacting in ways that clearly came out of low sense of self-worth; thinking of those low-stake situations as "sandboxes" and practicing reacting differently.
Sometimes it looked literally like imagining that I was not myself, but my friend who would have healthy boundaries / sense of self-worth in that particular arena, and then acting the way she would. Something about "play-acting" someone else worked as a scaffolding technique for me, where it was a) less scary and b) it was somehow more "permissible" for me to react differently than I normally would, because I would be able to access the recognition that when my friend with healthy self-esteem acted in those ways, I didn't find them odd or transgressive.
The more experiences I had of doing things differently, in the sense of acting like someone with a higher self-esteem than I had, and experiencing that nothing bad happened, the easier it was to act that way going forward. And relationally experiencing my preferences or self-presentation validated and respected helped me internalize a higher sense of self-worth. Sort of like Marxist theory if that means anything to you -- I changed the "material base" and the ideological superstructure followed.
posted by virve at 10:21 AM on June 28 [2 favorites]
Since you're aware of your cognitive distortions but having issues internalizing them into your body and heart, it might be more helpful to approach things emotionally. Talk to your therapist about whether exercises that have your sit with your feelings and your self might be helpful. It's hard to feel worthy if you're rejecting parts of your experience, or numbing yourself to them.
There can be a tendency in Western psychological frameworks (that is, the way we're often taught to think!) to feel we have to "build ourselves up" and kind of armor-up, when often what's more fulfilling is peeling back all the expectations and "shoulds" and pretense. Which it sounds like you realize, with the idea of getting rid of the mask. So it may be less about "building self-worth" than about "learning to sit with my messy, contradictory, irrational, uncomfortable self." Things like literally just sitting for five minutes (or three minutes, or one minute -- set a timer) and feeling what you're feeling -- not what you think you should be feeling, just whatever's actually coming up, which might be "boredom" or "numbness," which is fine -- might be a helpful exercise, but do check it with your therapist.
posted by lapis at 5:11 PM on June 28 [3 favorites]
There can be a tendency in Western psychological frameworks (that is, the way we're often taught to think!) to feel we have to "build ourselves up" and kind of armor-up, when often what's more fulfilling is peeling back all the expectations and "shoulds" and pretense. Which it sounds like you realize, with the idea of getting rid of the mask. So it may be less about "building self-worth" than about "learning to sit with my messy, contradictory, irrational, uncomfortable self." Things like literally just sitting for five minutes (or three minutes, or one minute -- set a timer) and feeling what you're feeling -- not what you think you should be feeling, just whatever's actually coming up, which might be "boredom" or "numbness," which is fine -- might be a helpful exercise, but do check it with your therapist.
posted by lapis at 5:11 PM on June 28 [3 favorites]
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Picture that part of you that is stepping to the front to try and "fix" your kid (or yourself) and describe it. Draw it like an anime character. (armor? messy hair? age, clothes?) Address it directly and thank it for looking out for you so well all those years, and say to it that it's ok for it to step aside now, to take a rest.
posted by Lady Li at 5:26 AM on June 28 [2 favorites]