Bedtime blues

While getting ready for bed tonight I started feeling immensely bummed out. To my mind came everything I was failing at. 

I eat to many sweet. Not enough veggies. I don't get enough movement into my day. I watch to much YouTube. Waste too much time on social media. Watch too many movies and television. I'm not learning or growing in anyway. Fail. Fail. Fail. Failure. 

What a buzz kill that line of thinking is. Now I fully acknowledge that any such thoughts around 9pm are usually triggered in part by the "bedtime blues" as I like to call it. The time of evening where no mater how good your day was or life is everything is horrible and life is the worst. The only answer to this? Go to bed and you will quite literally feel better in the morning. 

Problem is there are little beads of truth in those deeply self deprecating thoughts. I have been eating more sweets lately. I have also increased my media consumption. And between today and yesterday I spent a good amount of time on my couch or in my bed curled up under blankets. So what do we do now? Do we chalk up these feelings to the bedtime blues? Do we panic? Completely replan our life and set a thousand different goals to rectify every shortcoming? Do we do 100 sit-ups before bed? No, no, no and no. 

The best response is to be curious about those feelings of inadequacy or failure. Genuinely check in, has my life gotten out of control? Is it unmanageable? Where could I make reasonable goals to improve tomorrow? What am I doing well? What have a succeeded at today, this week, this month? 

I don't have answers to all those questions. It's nearly my bedtime and I'm pretty sleepy. But in sitting with these feelings I don't feel quite as consumed and overwhelmed. So we save the answers for another day and wish you and the rest of the world a good night. 

 

Morning musings

I sat across from my Dad asking him to choose me. To love me and want me and to try. And he couldn't do it. He couldn't say that he loves me. He couldn't reasure me. In that moment something broke between us. A flood of every other moment, insensitive comment, hurtful remark, choices he's made... they all came flooding in.

When he criticized me for what I was eating or how much I was eating. The letters and texts and conversations about how I should be different, do different, be more like someone else. Or how about when I was just starting to get healthy again and he threw a fit about the cost of my medical care. How about the calls and texts my siblings get that I don't. Or the acknowledgement of their relationship with him and the effort they put in but me? Nothing. And never, never an apology for how these things have hurt me. No acknowledgement of guilt or fault or wrongdoing. These moments all combine to tell 1 story and that story's theme? I don't love you.

Now do I truly believe my Dad doesn't love me? No not really. I think he loves me as much as and in the way that he can, and that's just generally sh*tty. I also don't necessarily think his lack of love for me is unique. I'm also not convinced in the last decade or so that he loves my Mom. 

I recently listened to a podcast where the host said: "I truly believe I am worthy of love and deserve to be surrounded in it everyday." Those words resonated with me. There are moments and because of recent events they have been more often than not. Where I do doubt or a wonder... if my own father doesn't love me who does? Who will? Am I even of value? Heck why keep living if the cost isn't valued by anyone else? 

But deep down? I know. I deserve love. I am worthy of love. And thats the basis for my distance to my father. I will not surround myself in a lack of love. I deserve better than that. I am still kind and respectful to him. And truthfully I still love him and care about him. But my boundaries are to protect myself from more hurt, more doubt, more loss. 

Moral of this story? I am worthy of love and so are you. I deserve to be surrounded by love and so do you. My life deserves to be filled with love and so does yours. 

dishes

There are moments in life that change us; we woke up one way, but by the time the next day dawns, we are different. Even if we don't fully know it yet. One of my moments came when I was... around 11. 

My grandfather was dying of pancreatic cancer, not a good time for anyone in my family. My family was basically living at my grandparents alongside most of my cousins and Aunts. It was a day like most of the others; the moms were stressed and worried, and sensitive, and the boys were all outside playing. When my Aunt asked me and my other girl cousins to do the dishes. Instead of jumping up to help, we grumbled and, at the suggestion of a cousin, hid ourselves to avoid the work. Unsurprisingly, my Aunt found us, but instead of yelling at us or imposing some other punishment, she cried. She cried about how hard life was and how we shouldn't be selfish; we needed to help right now. I felt awful, and right there and then, I decided I was not, and would not, ever be labeled as selfish again. A choice... a moment... that forever changed me.

From that day forward, at every family gathering, every church potluck, or party, I would be the first to jump up and wash the dishes. If you didn't know where I was, check the kitchen, and there I'd be, by the sink washing away. In many ways, this new part of me served me well. When I'd jump up at Grandma's, my Aunts and Uncles would sing my praises for being so kind and good. At church, I was thoughtful and helpful. In every choice to wash another dish, the chorus of "you are good and valued and loved" followed me. For a while, it worked... okay, longer than a while, it wasn't until the last few years that I realized, this dishwashing part of myself had involved herself in much more than just the dishes at the family gathering. 

Suddenly, much more than dishes were piling up. Every burden and challenge the world offered, the hurt and trials of family and friends, my own sadness and pain, it was all piling up taller and taller. And there she was frantically doing the dishes left and right. It was her only way to control, the only way to protect herself, the only way to keep the security of "you are loved, needed, valued," and that little voice inside whispered "this is who you are". But now? Now... I'm so... tired. 

Here's the problem with the endless parade of dishes: it took a while, but I started realizing that I sit with my soap and my sponge in my elbow-length bright yellow gloves and just want to wash those dishes. Clean them up, fix the problems, and off we go, onto the next! Here's the thing, though: I can't wash someone else's dishes. I just...can't. No matter how much she wants to, with her gloves and soap suds ready.

It doesn't work... they just don't come clean.

So there she is, gloves on, surrounded by dishes mine, ones others have given her, ones she has taken, promising and hoping that this time... this time she can get them clean. And she cries... she cries... she looks at the tower of dishes and cries. it hurts, it hurts to leave the dishes... I hurt because this is who I am... if I can't clean the dishes then... then what? 

Truthfully I don't want to stop washing dishes. It is part of who I am, a valued part of who I am that serves the whole well, but it's not all that I am. When the dish towers are too high, when I've lost track of which dishes are mine and which aren't. When she looks at the mess and cries. I am with her. I want to ask her to come over, come sit on the couch with me but she can't not yet. So instead, I go to her. I take her yellow gloved hand in mine and say "you are more than this. you are more than the dishes you do. you are not the dishes you don't do. you are good, and valued, and needed." Together we stand at the sink... and she cries and I cry because it does hurt... and that's okay. 

Today we cry together and tomorrow... tomorrow... tomorrow, we'll leave tomorrow for another day.