Guilt Tornado
I feel guilty for writing. I feel guilty for not writing. I should be exercising more. I should take my kids to more activities. Why haven’t I taught my four year old to read yet? Why haven’t I read the stacks of non-fiction books on my shelf that will help me become a better person? How come I can’t be more patient? Why don’t I enjoy being a stay at home parent more? It’s boring! How can I say that time with my sweet children is boring? That feeling is going to damage my kids and make them feel unloved. I need to choose myself. I need to sacrifice myself for the good of the kids. I can’t model poor mental health, I need to take more breaks. I can’t take more breaks, the kids need me. They aren’t getting enough vegetables and we eat too much meat. Why haven’t I saved up for an electric car yet? I should never have let my French lapse. I can’t ask for even more help, I am already overly lucky. I should be working, other parents work and take care of their kids, why don’t I have the drive to do both? Why am I not making my own income and helping our family financially? Why haven’t I started my Masters yet? Why didn’t I do more with my undergraduate degree? I’ve made terrible life choices. I shouldn’t have broken that boy’s heart. I wish I could apologize to that old friend I let down. Am I a terrible friend? Do I make bad first impressions? I’m too desperate and not confident enough, that’s why I have such a hard time making new friends. I should be volunteering and working and being a wonderful Mother and wife and sister and daughter. Why can’t I be content and grateful for my wonderful, privileged life? I am failing at everything.
Around and around and around it swirls, cutting a path of destruction through my mental health, my patience, my sanity. Ripping up all the rational thoughts and emotions in its path and tossing them aside like a house pulled off its foundation. A self-esteem eating twister of martyrdom. The Guilt Tornado.
Most adults struggle with guilt on some level (right??). Not eating healthier, spending too much time on your phone, not seeing your family often enough, skipping the gym, not being successful enough, biting your nails, forgetting to reply to all the texts and emails, giving up on your dreams, whatever your flavour. It’s become a regular habit of mine to beat myself up over nearly every decision I make in a day (it’s extra fun when it happens at 2:37am). From things like not playing with my kids enough, to not hosting more dinner parties, to watching TV instead of reading, to larger life decisions like not being a vegan or being more involved in activism (Fun fact: I was voted most likely to be arrested for protesting one year in High School. I wish I could get back to that brazen teenager I once was). I think the problem currently is that I am so close to the end of my rope so often, that when I boil over into guilt, my thoughts get whipped into a frenzy of negativity (this is probably why my son is so pessimistic. Gah, more things to feel bad about). Do you do that? It’s what gets me into the tornado. One bad thought becomes another and another and another until there isn’t any room for joy anymore. I feel too close to that tipping point where I no longer have the capacity for, well, much at all. I know this isn’t who I am at my core because I haven’t always felt like this, I haven’t always felt impatient and overwhelmed. Motherhood, it’s a doozy. A reader of mine recently said it was like pouring from an empty cup (thanks Liane!), and I can’t think of a better metaphor.
I have let guilt permeate too many areas of my life and it is making me a giant bummer to hang out with. I feel guilty when I raise my voice or lose control of my emotions. I feel guilty when I eat too much and don’t feel well. I feel guilty when I wish I was working and not staying home to play kids games on the floor, to wipe kid food off the floor, to feel relegated to the level of the floor. I feel guilty when in the one two hour period of my week where I get to be alone, I choose to fold laundry on my bed so I can watch a TV show that I like instead of writing or cleaning or doing personal development work. I feel guilty for not drinking enough water. I feel guilty for saying no too much, and when I say yes too much, because kids need structure but they also need joy and play and fun but you can’t let them exclusively eat cookies because they will get scurvy. I feel guilty for being on my phone too much. I’m not present and I am modelling poor habits. I would feel incredibly guilty if I suddenly one day decided that I’d had enough and packed up and left my family behind to pursue a new life on my own (which to reassure you, I would never do, but ask almost any parent and I bet the fantasy is there. We aren’t all crazy abandoners, we just want some space!) .
I want to have an amazing life and if I’m honest with myself, guilt isn’t the reason that I don’t feel like I do. My life is pretty awesome, my problem is perspective. Yes, there are still lots of things I want to do, but what about what is happening right now? Also, wanting and actually executing are two different things. The wanting doesn’t mean I have now or had in the past the motivation or the bravery or capacity to do all the things I yearn for. I have struggled with the getting up and committing myself to learning something, like a second language or an instrument, for what feels like a very long time. I really admire the people who dedicate themselves to a craft and become experts. I have slowly started to resign myself to realizing that I am not going to live that bold life that I think I want. That I won’t ever reach the mountain top. And in some ways that gives me permission to be content with simpler things, and that is good. To be able to practice gratitude for a sunny winter day, to savour a warm cup of comforting tea, and not to worry about my RRSPs or my (very) unfinished novel. In other ways, that resignation feels dangerous. It feels like I am letting slip the possibility of living a fuller life, the life my aspirations are chasing. Because why not me? Why can’t I be the one who has wonderful friendships and goes on regular trips to new places and finally writes a story of 100,000 words?
Time, money, fear. Those are the big 3 things that usually hold us back. Time and money are fair I think, at least at this stage in my life. But fear, fear is a silent killer of dreams. I have always felt like I could be counted as someone who wasn’t afraid of too much, but I’m not sure that’s true and I can’t help but wonder why that matters so much to me. I’m not very comfortable with the crashing waves of an ocean trying to suck me under (or crabs, they are creepy) if I were to go out surfing again, but I can stand up in a room full of strangers and make an announcement or a speech and make a mistake and laugh it off. I really want to learn how to refurbish old furniture and build new pieces, but I am afraid of power-saws. I am afraid of starting a business that fails and then being in debt. I am afraid of people not liking me, of leaving me. I like to rise above my abandonment issues, but I think they are unfortunately deeper than I want them to be. I am afraid of living my whole, loud, true self and not being accepted.
More than anything, I feel guilty for my life unlived and I get bogged down by FOMO, which is such a bad perspective to have. It makes me stuck. I feel like I squandered my twenties, not having enough direction, and struggling with my demons, the heaviest of them being guilt and depression. I have depression in my genes, and because I am the most emotionally functional person in my family, I tend to let myself off the hook for depression. Doesn’t everyone have bad days? I think to myself. Mine can pull me down and hold me back in ways I don’t see in the eyes of everyone I meet. It can drain me in a way I don’t think I could describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it. Like, a plug being pulled in your serotonin resevoir. Am I right? Or are we all excellent illusionists?
I don’t want to be held back, it makes me ache, it makes me feel GUILTY when I don’t DO MORE! We only get one life, or at least one that we are conscious of, and if we waste it, that’s it. I don’t want to be on the precipice of old age and feel this same guilt. I want to find a way out of it. I want to look back and recognize all the good things I have done and experienced, and not focus so much on the things I didn’t do. It’s a recipe for unhappiness.
I have been told it again and again, but I have a hunch that this self-love that everyone recommends is the ticket out. I haven’t done the work, clearly. I’ve tried, I’ve started and lapsed. I’ve never been an addict but maybe this is my sickness. The lack of a foundation to love myself and let that confidence lead me into a life I love. It occurs to me that I listed a lot of things I feel I do wrong in this article, but perhaps I should go and write a list of the things I think I do well.
The self-parenting and loving your inner child seems to be hard for me. When I imagine my five year old self, who has just been told that her Mother has died, or my eleven year old self, who has been betrayed by someone she trusts, and I think about comforting them, it feels lovely, but it also hurts. It hurts because those kids aren’t healed yet, and the adult that follows them is still aching.
Ahhh, I don’t have the answers, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I think, I think I feel trapped. I feel trapped by my past decisions and my current reality and I don’t seem to be able to move forward or see all the beauty and potential that is right in front of me. Maybe, maybe this just isn’t the time for big growth and big change. Maybe this is the time for survival, for one day at a time, for smaller steps. For finding little joys. And to accept that I can’t do it all at once, that’s just not realistic, unless there truly are parallel universes. I have to do the work and be patient.
I have re-written this piece over and over and I feel like it is getting more convoluted, but it is like my personal therapy, so I am going with it. My word of the year this year is BREATHE. In with the new, out with the old. In with love, out with guilt. I’ll give it a try. As I crawl out of the tornado, the forecast looks a little better on the other side.