Cost

My mom and a friend of mine have been gently pushing me to seek some sort of therapy in the face of the enormous losses I’ve experienced over the last 6 months. And I’ve been not so gently telling them that I’m fine. Because, really, I am. I’m living my day-to-day life. I’m taking care of my children. I’m doing laundry. I’m cooking for my family every day. I get out of bed every day and do what needs to be done. I’m fine.

But my mom went one step further a few days ago when we were talking about this when I asked her why she thought I needed to talk to someone and she answered with this: “Well, most people go into counseling so that they can have an unbiased person ask them questions they can’t ask themselves. But now that I think about it, you don’t need that. You are brutal with yourself in your quest for self-examination. Maybe you need to talk to someone who can teach you to be a bit gentler with yourself.”

And that made me stop. Because she’s right. I am a perfectionist with almost everything in my life. I need to do it right the first time. I research things endlessly until I’m ready to talk about them not only intelligently, but borderline expertly. I cannot stand having to say, “I don’t know.” It literally pains me.

But, as I’m sure you can imagine, this level of perfectionism carries costs. I don’t know how to be gentle with myself and my process. I keep saying those words, “I will be gentle with myself,” in the hopes that one of these days I will eventually learn what that means. It unconsciously shoots my expectations of the people around me through the roof, which leads to disappointment on a level which can most certainly be averted. It makes me prisoner to my process by not allowing me to fully reach out to others until I feel safe enough in my own knowledge to do so. It keeps me from fully showing myself to people for fear that what they see won’t be enough.

And there we reach the crux of where I am now. When I lost my Dad, I shut down almost completely to focus on my process. Because I had to be solid for my children and my Mom. I had to be together to see them through this. But when I lost Laurel and the girls, I almost immediately started reaching out. Perhaps it’s because of the radical difference in circumstances between the two losses. But mostly it was some sort of subconscious self preservation, I think. I could not figure out how to face their deaths alone. There was no human way for me to process those events without first somehow grounding myself. And I did that through reaching out to these other amazing women.

It’s been almost two months now and the time came this past Friday evening to finally meet these women in person. To make that connection tangible. And I allowed myself to use a rough week, an insanely busy day, exhaustion and a hell of a headache to sabotage that. I could have pushed through it all and gone. And probably would have felt instantly better upon arrival. But I caved to my own discomfort and, ultimately, my own fear. Now every time I think about that, I am awash with guilt. Because I was the one causing disappointment this time. I was the one who let people down. All I had to do was show up. And my own perfectionism would not allow me to do that.

How is that even remotely a tribute to Laurel’s life? How does that do our friendship and her love of me justice?

It doesn’t. Quite simply. So, I find myself at a choice point. Do I continue to berate myself into the ground for this or do I attempt to take this as an opportunity to experiment with being gentle with myself? The answer is obvious, now I just have to pray that I am strong enough to follow through.