I don’t know why I get like this. I mean, it’s not like I could do much more without morphing into some Ben Franklin type early to bed early to rise superhuman type being. There are people like that, you know. Who can do ten loads of laundry and actually SORT it on the same day. There are some who can even put it away in the right drawers too. Or there are people who can do the supermarket shopping and land up with something to cook for supper. Or who can manage not to let their houses sink into squalor before hollering “I can’t live like this! Who can live like this?” before torturing the entire family with a two-hour cleaning binge. Or who can successfully work, parent, shop, clean, maintain functional relationships with their long-distance friends and still have a glass of slightly chilled white wine while wearing linen and discussing Proust of an evening.

Or even just get through the day being good enough.

Thing is, I fundamentally think that I’m doing well enough, or as well-enough as I can manage this week. But then something will happen or I’ll let something slide and I’ll then spend the next few days feeling sad that I cannot be good enough to make everything right and happy.

This is a pretty natural place to live emotionally when you have a child who struggles as hard as mine does. The inclination to think that if I, as his mother, would just do this, be this, try this, find this — then things would be better for him. And that since they are not better, that I am implicated. That I am at fault. That I am not good enough.

Of course, many many posts ago, Krista forcefully reminded me that I am not the keeper of my child’s emotional well-being. That’s a hard bit of imaginary control to surrender, though. The idea that I might, if I did just the right thing, make him okay. I can’t of course. We can’t, any of us, make any other person okay just through our own force of will. Or desire to make them so. I have spent my life believing that if I were better, smarter, gooder (you know what I mean), prettier, livelier, holier, nicer — then things around me would be all right. My mother would be happier. My father. My friends would like me more. My boyfriends stay. It’s all an illusion, a dreadful one. A burden. And yet a burden I am frightened to put down. Because then I have to admit that I am not in control of so many things. And that the scary swirling world can visit its chaos, its confusion upon me regardless of me. All I can seek to control, is me. My behavior. My reactions. My well-being.

(Of course, there’s still that voice in my head that says — Yes! Exactly. If you control your behavior and reactions well enough, then you can make your children and loved ones happier! Prettier! More vitamin packed! — Ack! Behind me, foul fiend! Like I haven’t got enough to do today already.)

Similar Posts:

• There was a birthday*
• Negativity
• Aging