Most of the time I just do what I do and don’t tend to analyse or even think much about it. I plan meals, shop and cook, do the housework, get children to and from school and their activities complete with packed lunches, football kits, dancing shoes etc.and because it is what I do I guess I as much as the rest of the family just take it for granted. I do on occasion forget things or book an appointment for the children when they have a club because I forget or haven’t written it on the calendar. I have missed appointments in the past too, again because I either forgot to write it down or because I just had too many things to remember and too many places to be. I usually berate myself dreadfully when these things happen. After all, for years I held down a full-time job outside the home as well all the things I do now, and rarely forgot things. Somehow it seems that the busier I was the easier it was to schedule things and remember them, and now to forget something makes me feel angry with myself as I have less pressure and stress, fewer things to remember therefore it should be easier.
I know that this is just that critical voice talking, the one that is like a broken record and has been with me since childhood, it sounds at times just like my mother or my teachers. The repetitive strain of “why can’t you be like your sisters”, or “you are useless, lazy, good for nothing”, or “no point in asking you to do it, you will only do it wrong” and so on the chorus that accompanied my growing up. No matter how hard I tried nothing I did lived up to the expectations of the adults in my world, and soon I began to repeat that pattern, putting more and more pressure on myself to be perfect, to take on everything, yet somewhere deep inside always expecting to fail, to fall at the last hurdle, trying to prove to everyone else that they were wrong but always ending proving to myself just how useless I really was.
The more I learn recognise these thoughts the better I am at ignoring them, refusing to engage them, to give the light of day. I know better now, but it has taken years to realise what I was doing to myself, the damage that negative voice does is not irreparable but the hurt takes a long time to heal and a lot of effort and I am not there yet. I find it difficult to accept praise, to acknowledge the good things I do, I dismiss them as just part of normal everyday life, the things that everyone else does that we all take for granted.
Yesterday however, I was brought up short. I took the children to the opticians where we all had consecutive appointments. The children were all seen first, I then went in to the optician who asked me how I was and then told me that she found it amazing that I had managed to get all three children there on time from three different places. As this was normal to me I just shrugged, she repeated that she found it amazing, that she had one son and found it incredibly difficult to get him anywhere on time yet I had managed to organise the children to all come at the same time, one from home with me, the other two from school. Again I just sort of dismissed what she had said and thought no more of it until this morning when I happened to mention to someone at yoga class that I had taken all the children to the opticians yesterday and had an appointment myself. She also expressed surprise that I could organise this, she has two children and makes separate appointments for them. Maybe it is some kind of major organisational feat to get us all to some place at the same time, I don’t know, again it is just what I do. I find it easier to get it all done and dusted in one go rather than have to remember several appointments and make more trips.
We are all different, we all work differently and one of the most important lessons I have learned over the last few years is to try to stop comparing what I do to what others do. To just accept who I am and what I do as unique and to celebrate my uniqueness rather than berating myself for it.
Searching for the light. 