I am coming to terms. I’m highly critical of myself; I can bum myself out with the worry and the guilt I build up regarding just about anything I do or don’t do, and I often limit what I will do based on how I think people will perceive me, or more importantly, how I happen to be perceiving myself at the time.
This is how it usually goes down on the weekends, which under normal circumstances, is a working family’s reprieve:
I wake up on Saturday mornings, and I’m tired. I have spent a lot of time and energy during the week doing my job at work, doing my job at home, and to top it all off, worrying about how good of a job I actually did at both. I decide to sit down and play on the computer, or watch random movies on cable or read a book. I often make the children fend for themselves when it comes to finding something to do. I don’t want to do laundry, or vacuum, or even cook. I have projects that need to be done and errands to run. I think about helping the second son with his homework during the weekend, so I don’t feel as much pressure during the week, but none of this actually gets done. I look at the loads of laundry the boys have piled up in the laundry room, and I balk at the amount of folding that needs to be done.
I feel overwhelmed.
Then, on Sunday, I try to pile everything into one day. I do laundry, housecleaning, projects, and errands like a mad woman. Then I am exhausted again, and by the time Sunday evening rolls around, I feel as if I have not accomplished enough at home, I think about all of the things that I should have done for work during the weekend to make my week more manageable, and I am frustrated because I did not really do what I want to do with my free time—I just kind of copped out and sat on my butt. I didn’t go out with the boys and explore something new. I didn’t exercise the way I wanted to. I didn’t go out and see friends. I didn’t even spend time focusing on what I want to do for myself—the less I think about that, the better.
By Sunday evening, I am grumpy and tired of cleaning, of thinking, of worrying, and by this time, the kids have usually messed up the house once again, or need something else, and I am totally ready to check out once more.
Then the week starts all over again, and I worry about the job I am doing at work, and the job I am doing at home during the weeknights and weekends, and I am back into the same cycle of destructive behavior.
***
I ended up not doing what would be good for me—spiritually, intellectually, emotionally. I felt since I could not get my shit together under ‘normal’ circumstances, I had no right to take away more time from my family. If I undertook more, I would fail at more. I chose not to take the creative writing class, or go to the spa with my gift certificate, or start a book club—because I cannot add another thing to my act, right? I felt like I cannot finish a novel, or learn how to throw pottery, or undertake a large project, because I am just average. I am not that good—as witnessed by my piss-poor behavior.
The guilt, the worry, the lack of stimulation; I know it ate at me, and I felt as if I could not fix it. I didn’t know why I felt this way. I knew that I was sick of this cycle, but just knowing it didn’t seem to be the catalyst I needed.
I have a job that I love, a healthy family, a supportive husband. We have a good life, especially now. Isn’t this the reason why people are happy? Why am I sabotaging my own happiness?
And then, I had THE epiphany. What did the epiphany tell me? It told me that this is all BS. That I was focusing on these feelings of guilt and remorse because I had become used to feeling guilt and remorse, and I was used to the drama. With the actual, legitimate drama of the past few years removed, I felt lost, so I have been in the process of inventing more drama, conceiving fake drama, in order to feel like I had before. Because this feeling: of freedom, of happiness, of possibility, had become foreign to me, and I did not know how to handle it, I chose to subconsciously find a way back to the drama to which I had grown accustomed.
It can be very difficult to return to normalcy after life-altering events. Now, granted, our life-altering events are nothing, compared to some events that other families have to endure. That being said, what we went through was still very difficult, and the return to something more healthy and productive doesn’t just occur when the initial wave of relief washes over you. It takes months, and while I had given it months of time, I had not given it months of concerted effort and attention. I thought, “Things are good now, and they keep getting better, and everything is right once again.”
That is true, and not true, at the same time.
Things are better, but I keep putting the same amount of pressure on myself. Instead of ‘fixing’ the situation now, I place pressure on myself to be perfect, happy, and ingenious. To do it all. It just doesn’t work that way.
This weekend, I did watch some movies on cable, and read a book. I am not going to feel guilty about it. I am going to make my husband fold and put away the laundry. I am going to try to get the homework done with Ant, and work on one project. I’ll spend an hour each day cleaning up the house. I made myself get the family out to do something fun last night. I think I will try the same today. I will not feel bad, I will not feel guilty, I will not worry about work, or put pressure on myself to be a person that I am not, or be in a place I cannot possibly be in quite yet.
Because where I am at right now if just fine, and I should not be the one criticizing myself about where I ‘should be’.
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