I recently counted over 10 unfinished crochet, weaving, and sewing projects, with two more started just this week. Combined with my unfinished novel that I stalled at 221 pages, and its sequel that I got 30 pages into, several homeschool projects left incomplete, and an office I cleared out and organized just two boxes short of "done," and it has become apparent to me that I have a serious fear of completing things.
My instinct is that if I complete something, then I run the risk of having it judged as "not good" and "insufficient," and as long as projects remain unfinished, I am safe from judgment.
My old therapist would have me write out this fear, and then come up with evidence of why this isn't true.
Unfortunately, I have many example of it being completely true, of throwing my whole heart and soul into something and having it be completely inadequate and inferior.
This is why I hate therapy.
It always made me more depressed instead of less. Nothing like validating your fears...
So here I am, trying to go back to school. I say trying because now instead of a good mother or a good student (I got straight A's my first year of college so many years ago), I am now a half-assed mother and a half-assed student. I'm tired all the time, I don't always gets my homework finished, and I don't spend the amount of time with my children that I used to.
When I put more effort into studying, my children suffer. I spent this last week trying to put in more effort with my children, and my homework suffered.
To all you single mamas out there who went back to school and did it all, I solute you. The sacrifices you made amaze me.
I wasted a lot of unmedicated years that I could have spent finishing school and gaining marketable skills before I was finally able to conceive Connor. Years I could have perfected my own crafting skills, and worked at what was an awesome earning capacity before I fell apart. I wish I could have found the right treatment sooner, and that Social Security didn't make me take them to court and fight for 3 years to finally get my benefits and medical help. I wish I had been able to put more things in order before my children came so that I wouldn't be frantically trying to balance children and school right now out of fear that if something ever happens to Bryan I won't be able to support my family.
I know I'm not the only one who has looked at her life in her mid-thirties and thought, this was NOT how it was supposed to be.
But, it is.
I look around me, where I live, how I spend my time, how my body has changed, what I own, what I know, what I've experienced in the last 36 years of my life, and then I curl up with my children in our shared bed, and they tell me they love me, and I wish so deeply that the love was all we needed, that love would keep us warm, that love would pay the rent and feed us healthy foods and give us dental care. I wish love and peace were all anyone needed.
Well, everyone I gave sections of my book to ended up either not liking it or simply losing interest, the pattern I put on Etsy sold once and I never got feedback on it, my kids never play with any of the crochet toys I make them, and I'm getting a B instead of an A in biology because I turn my homework in late and not because I don't know the material. I want to be okay with this somehow. I want to let go of the need to be awesome in all things and call it "good enough." I don't know how to do this. Probably most of us don't.
More importantly, whatever baggage I have with me now that I should have thrown out years ago, I want to raise my children without this baggage. I want them to know that being second or third is still wonderful, that we can be happy for people who excel at the things we love, and that falling short of our goal despite putting in all our effort does not change our value as people.
I want them to believe they are valuable simply because they exist, because I wish I believed that.
My value is not changed when I become more productive, despite what politicians say. My value does not change when I under-perform others, or even perform under my own past abilities.
As a human being, I have value. I do not have to earn this value by obeying certain rules or competing for certain rewards. It is not something I have to prove. My capacity for compassion is greater than my capacity for resentment or contempt. I am worth more than what others may tell me I am worth, and loveable even when the people closest to me treat me as though I am not. When I am slighted or overlooked and put second, it is not a true measure of me.
And that is a lesson I want to learn. Words I want to believe. And beliefs I want my children to have.
7 comments:
I struggle with this issue myself. I think I've done a pretty good job by now of being ok with mediocrity in certain things, but it's taken me a long time to get there. Now I'm mainly working on how to raise a kid that doesn't rate her self-worth by how well she does things. The new research seems to show that we should be encouraging persistence instead of good results. It's hard, though; I find myself constantly counter-programming against messages she gets from other people or from TV or books or whatever. (example: Everyone is special for something! I'm special because I run really fast! Jane is special because she's so smart! grrrrr)
I have seen so many extremely smart people fall short of their potential because they (subconsciously) chose to self-sabotage rather than risk trying and failing. I don't care if my kid makes a lot of money or whatever, but I want to make sure she has a good sense of SELF-EFFICACY.
Amen. I've been having similar thoughts myself lately. Thank you for this.
It like that pin that's floating around Pinterest: "I miss being the age where I thought I'd have my shit together by the he I am now."
I too spend a lot of time chasing perfection, achievements, checks on a chart. I like your thoughts here, going to let them rattle around my head for a while.
It's hard to realize that you wern't up for all the things you thought you were--I found that myself this last quarter. I had too much, and had to give up something. In my case, it was school. I relate to a week spent focused on my school (and my kids watched too many movies and didn't get enough stories or snuggles or very good food), and then a week spent focused on kids (when my homework suffered). There is a desire to do it all well... I was a great student when I was single. But I've been trying to learn to set different standards for myself. In school, I stopped aiming for As. I started aiming for Bs. I was just content with that. It was good enough. A B average (usually a 3.5) will maintain a scholarship, and it's certainly acceptable for grants and loans. Once you graduate, nobody ever looks back at what the GPA was, they just look at whether you are competent in your field. I know plenty of teachers who graduated with C averages in fact (which is a whole other issue LOL!)
On the one hand, maybe it feels like giving up, to set these new (lower) standards for myself, but it's because I recognize my intense need to measure up...and some of my personal expectations have been unrealistic. So I have tried to adjust my expectations so that I CAN live up to them, and CAN be a success. *I* know that I am smart, even if it doesn't always show in my grades. I can look at those grades and say "yeah, i bombed that assignment because I spent the weekend playing with my kids instead of writing a good paper..." but then I can look at my kids and say "and my kids love me and are healthy and happy." And that can be success.
I realize this is easier said than done. I've been practicing for a few years. But it has been helping me. Sort out my priorities (happy kids, feed everybody, graduate) and then the lower priorities (nice grades, healthy food every day, etc). And then I realize that it's ok to have PB&J or pancakes for dinner once a week, and to have my husband cook on another day a week, and to take one night a week where I stay up crazy late working on homework, but another two nights a week where I HAVE to go to bed early enough to get enough sleep, even if the homework isn't done... Maybe it's triage of my life. Sometimes it really does feel that way. But then again, the point of triage is to take care of what can be taken care of, and to let go of what cannot.
Have you ever read Single Dad Laughing's Blog post on The Disease Called "Perfection", your post reminds me a lot of it so I went back and reread it.
I struggle myself with old expectations and new disappointments. Negative self talk when it comes to not meeting my own standards (based usually on quantifiable "A"s I used to get in school instead of the real world ambiguity of work, family life, and contentment). I am a master at beginning projects that never get completed and wishing and hoping for things without really working at them (or only working at them in a way that will not lead to failure or risk). I am guilty of looking for validation outside myself instead of being enough for me and being okay with who I am in my own capacity regardless of how limited they may be now compared to what they were when I was young and nothing was set in stone.
I urge you to be kind to yourself. To understand that you are not the sum of your limitations and they do not define you anymore than your accomplishments do.
Well, I promise you this...WHEN you finish my bag, I will LOVE it and RAVE about it, and take it EVERYwhere with me... :-)
Love you!
I still think about your book from time to time and hope that it does get finished!!
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