Do you love me? Am I enough?
I ask you these questions in my head with each interaction we have.
There’s a masochistic brutality to these thoughts that make me flinch as they materialize.
Lately I find myself worn down, melancholy, and anxious. My personal and professional to-do lists are lengthy and I’m distracted and unable to focus or complete one thing at a time. My days are spent jumping from one task to another in fear of forgetting about the thing that just flashed across my brain. My written lists of needs and action items are exhaustive and messy. The notes I write to myself have a manic quality.
Instead of being gentle with myself, the voice in my head tells me:
Somewhere inside, there are rules I’ve created about what it means to be successful, kind, productive, a mom, a wife, an employee, a yoga instructor. I measure my own worth with each action I take and find that I don’t fit the proper criteria. My internal performance ranking is, “needs improvement.”
I worry my husband thinks I’m lazy, my friends find me annoying and disposable, my colleagues find me stupid and useless. Each thing I do serves a purpose, it’s never for pleasure and enjoyment. All I want is to be loved, and these arbitrary directives tell me that unless I meet their standards, there’s no way I will be.
I have no evidence that any of these things are true, and yet my brain hands me these pieces of false information on a silver platter and insists they are law. Insists they will always be, regardless of how hard I work.
I’ve become so dysregulated that I can’t even find peace on the yoga mat.
I tell my therapist over and over how frustrated I am that I can’t just be “fixed.” Haven’t I put in enough work in the wake of my son’s death? Shouldn’t I be calm and peaceful and aligned by now? Why do I keep cycling through these painful periods? She reminds me that really, I’m just human. She reminds me that being a working mom of two little kids is challenging. She reminds me that the best thing I can do for myself right now is try to relinquish the constant sense of needing to achieve. To re-learn to be present in my own life instead of catastrophe planning.
She asks me what purpose the voice serves. What role does it play? I understand that she (the voice) sees herself as my protector. She keeps me in line so that I never let anyone down. She keeps me working towards my goals. She wants me to be loved and beloved by my friends, family, colleagues. She is not unlike myself in that I aim to protect the ones I love, though sometimes too aggressively.
B tells me he loves me, that he thinks I’m strong and capable, a wonder, nowhere near lazy. I can’t believe it, I can’t let my guard down. I have hardwired myself to trust only the voice in my head. She has gaslit me into an alternate reality. I am miserable.
Perhaps the real enemy is my refusal to feel the things that make me uncomfortable and sad, while also refusing to self soothe. I’ve put myself in a sort of emotional purgatory. My brain itches, I want peace. I’ve allowed myself to fall victim to a false god. The insistence that I don’t have the time to feel the things that hurt has been my recent undoing.
It feels like I’m back to the drawing board. It’s exhausting. Slowly but surely, I’m working to rewrite the rules. Or rather, remove the rules. Reclaiming what is pleasurable. Making decisions for myself.
Why share? What I’ve found is that when I can be honest with pieces of my motherhood (because really this feels like an issue of my motherhood), I get an outpouring of, “me too,” and, “thank you so much for saying this thing that I haven’t been able to.”
A dear friend, over coffee, reminded me the power of the sharing. The community.
In this phase of my life, I crave community. My sense of which has shifted drastically the last six months. It’s been painful and challenging, and I feel like an open wound.
Little by little, we rebuild. We forge a new path. I hope to be an example for my daughters, that you can learn to meet the messiness of life with a sense of grace kindness towards yourself. One day I’ll get there.
Beautifully honest! Your bravery to share how you’re feeling in this season is so admirable. And you’re not alone! 💓💓