Daily Summary:
I slept decently last night. Woo! It meant I was able to wake up when Ox called to let me know he was almost done with work. I was able to cough my lungs clear from the yuck that had settled overnight. I was able to shower and make a grocery list. I was able to convince Ox to come to the apartment and pick me up rather than having me drive somewhere to meet him. 

While I was able to do all these things. I felt tired. Bone tired. I didn’t feel like I would be able to make it through the whole grocery trip much less drive myself there and back. Oh! How could I forget walking down and then back up three flights of stairs to top it all off? With groceries! Yeah. No…

It seemed like a huge task that didn’t have high odds of being successful. Even something as small as not driving helped the odds feel ever so slightly more in my favor. 

I masked up as Ox and I headed into the store. I got more meds and tissues. Ox got the phone card he needed along with some headphones to use at the apartment. More on that later. We got the grocery things I wanted/needed along with a few things that weren’t on the list. In my defense… stuffed crust supreme pizza should have always been on the list. >.>;

By the end of the trip, I hurt. My whole body hurt. I was grouchy and short-tempered. Ox kept walking away with the cart through the trip but I was too tired to call out to him when the first few times I tried weren’t loud enough for him to hear me. 

I wasn’t short of breath or coughing or anything along those lines. Just… tired. I’m also a week behind on my Synthroid. I honestly feel like that’s a bigger factor than the congestion since I felt fine after the shower. 

I explained to Ox why his walking away bothered me so much. I explained how I was hurting. He walked slower as we headed back to the Trax together. That helped. It was a windy, cloudy, cold day and I was grateful to be back at the apartment once we were done. 

Ox hung out with me for a bit. He had an appointment to file taxes later in the evening. It seemed the better option for him to stay at the apartment until the appointment rather than driving all the way back to the house only to come back into town later to go back to the house at the end of it all. 

Nope. Instead, he had lunch with me and used his new headphones to play on the PS4 while I was at work. It was nice. Him being near. Not being alone the whole day. 

Before work, I curled up in bed to try to get over the tiredness. I wasn’t able to; not completely. I cried. More evidence in my opinion that it’s Synthroid related. I didn’t really have a reason to cry but there I was crying not pretty tears with the only reason my brain could come up with being “I’m tired.”

Well… crying didn’t make us feel less tired. So thanks, Brain, for wasting what precious, sweet energy we DID have on something useless that made us congested all over again. You’re a jerk. 

Work went well. No quality corrections today at least. I finished the cross-stitch I was working on. I prepped fabric for my next four projects and started a new one. I have all of my unneeded threads organized and ready to be put away. Maybe I’ll finish doing that tonight. 

My energy levels got better as the day progressed. By the time Ox left for his appointment, I felt more on the “normal” side and less on the “I’m so tired I’m crying” side. Counting that as a win. /flex

After Ox left I continued listening to Girl Wash Your Face. There were some pretty heavy chapters. Not all of them apply to me. I’m not a new mom. I’m not a mother with school-aged children. There are things I can empathize and relate to in certain ways, but not as completely as other readers might. 

There is one section that touched me deeply and it’s what I’ll ramble about tonight. 

Oh. I was also able to put all of the groceries away and load the dishwasher. Totally owning that shit because I’m not going to let my cry session win.

Random Ramblings:

I don’t remember the chapter specifically, but in it, Rachel explains how she felt the need to be “small”. To have attention, but not too much attention. To have goals, but only if they weren’t too big; too lofty. 

While I can relate to those feelings, that wasn’t the part of the chapter that touched me deepest. 

In this chapter, she talks about a seminar she attended. The presenter asked the audience, “When you were a child, which parent did you want love from the most? Not which parent did you love the most. Who did you WANT love from the most?”

“What did you feel you had to be to get that love?”

“What else did you have to be?”

Rachel answers these questions and explains the insight she gained about herself because of them. Lies she had unknowing believed all her life were based on these perceptions she developed as a child. 

And so here I am tonight, asking myself the same questions and recognizing my own lies within myself. Lies that I never understood were there, but explain so much of who I am and what I went through in past relationships. 

I wanted love from my dad. He was my superman. I wanted him to be proud of me. To smile when I did something. As a child, making him happy was my world.

I felt I had to be obedient to get his love; to be worthy of his love. He would get so upset if he had to tell me to do something twice. If I didn’t get good grades. If I got in trouble. I had to do the right thing and even if I didn’t know what was right or wrong, I was punished for doing something “wrong”. It didn’t matter what my level of knowledge was. I wasn’t allowed to argue my point. I was wrong. End of story.

It made me afraid to try things for fear of being wrong. I had to be “right” and “good” otherwise he wouldn’t be happy, and that’s all I wanted. Was for him to be happy and proud of me. 

I also had to be compliant, which for me is different from obedience. It was ok if we did stuff, but it had to be what he wanted to do. It had to be done his way. I couldn’t want things. I especially couldn’t want something different. I couldn’t have my own idea of how something would be done. I was the child and he was the adult. Not just an adult. He was my parent. I had to listen. It was his way or the highway and that’s how it was. That meant even if I wanted something, I learned to not voice that because if my opinion or what I wanted differed, then it was wrong and not ok. I had to comply regardless of how I felt. Otherwise, he would be upset and my dad being upset, especially at me, was bad. 

How did this affect me? 

It meant when he divorced my mom, when he told my younger brother and I that he fell out of love with mom and wouldn’t be around anymore, that I felt like a failure. I hadn’t been obedient enough. I hadn’t cleaned my room enough. I hadn’t tried hard enough at school. I hadn’t listened the first time enough. I hadn’t BEEN enough for him to love me enough to stay. 

That was eight-year-old me. 

As a 20-something adult, I understood better what my dad had been trying to say. Having had two failed relationships under my own belt while currently being in an emotionally and mentally abusive one, I understood what it felt like to feel alone and unloved even as you tried to fall asleep next to someone who said they loved you. 

As a child though, I grew up and believed wholeheartedly that I hadn’t been enough. That I WASN’T enough. I had to care more. I had to listen more. I had to obey more. I had to comply more. I had to BE more because what I had been for my dad hadn’t been enough. 

I see that so clearly now; that mentality. That lie. I lived and breathed it for so long, and in some ways still do.

It’s why conflict bothers me so deeply, especially when it’s with someone I care about. It’s why attacks on my character cut harsher than attacks on my actions. It’s why I try everything I can to make sure there is some level of “ok-ness” when I find myself in hard or uncomfortable situations with loved ones. Their mad or angry, but it’s ok because they are still willing to hug me. They still love me enough even though I did this “bad” thing.

Deep down, I still have that eight-year-old’s fear that unless I am more, they’re going to leave. More compliant. More caring. More loving. More predictable. More obedient. More reliable. More quiet. More easy-going. More happy. More. More. More.

I have to be more. More of what they want. Less of what I want. Less even if what I “want” is something I actually need. 

It’s… sobering. To realize the underlying cause of so much which drives me to find harmony and acceptance within my life… It makes it easier to understand why voicing my thoughts and feelings can feel like the earth-shattering, world-ending task it sometimes feels like. It explains why “talking” can feel like a death sentence I try with every fiber of my being to avoid that I break down into a sobbing disaster of a human or have anxiety attacks. 

Voicing my opinion, thoughts, or feelings will make them unhappy, and if they’re unhappy they’ll leave because I’m not being enough of the right things. 

It will not be easy sharing this writing to share with Ox. It’s not easy writing this for myself, much less giving voice to it with the people in my life who are unknowingly subjected to this completely valid and yet irrational eight-year-old’s fear. 

Understanding and awareness can allow for growth and change. At the moment, I want to give myself grace and love for having harbored these unknown thoughts for so long. I’m in my thirties and until tonight I didn’t realize how deeply these unknown thoughts affected me or how they continue to play out in my life. I didn’t understand how my fears and actions were fueled in an attempt to avoid a trauma from recurring. 

I love my inner child, and in the landscape of my mind, I am hugging her as she cries. I’m crying with her as my thirty-year-old self and telling her she is loved. She is enough. She never has to be anything other than herself because she is perfect and precious just the way she is. She can be loud and opinionated. She can be angry and mad and other people can be angry and mad at her and it’s ok. She’s going to be ok because I love her. 

I am ok. I am enough. I am precious and perfect in my own way and I’m ok with that.