Keep your head up
I have this thing where I feel personally responsible or guilty even for not being able to fix every problem as it arises. If it impacts only myself then it’s not really a big deal but the second a problem causes my family an issue I need to be able to instantly resolve it. If I cant I spiral and devolve into a pit of guilt and doubt and a feeling of uselessness. So yesterday our heater had a heart attack and after 6 hours of troubleshooting I had to order a part that wont be here for a few days. The house was 58 degrees. On the upside the heater had its issue the first day after a sub zero week. It was in the 30s outside yesterday even. But I had so much guilt and anxiety that Jen was going to be too cold, to be miserable. Now understand we have portable heaters, we have warm clothes and blankets. We are fine. In my head though that level of inconvenience impacting Jen was enough to cause my brain to spiral into all the bad neighborhoods of my psyche yesterday. When I say that level of hardship I mean dressing warm and running heaters. And spending a bit of money on the repair. But on the more macro level, in the grand scheme of things, the hardship we are going thru right now is no more concerning than a cloudy day really. I have to remind myself of that, because I know we would be ok in a true emergency; we have done it before. It is a weird dichotomy in my head that must have to do gymnastics to get to the point it is making me feel shitty over a small speed bump but also fully ready for the apocalypse and collapse of society.
So I spent the day yesterday feeling the weight of the perceived failure, trying to come up with a way out, a fix that I had not thought of yet. But in the end it was just something that I had to let go, to accept this small bump is occurring and we are fine and we will get past it. When I was younger this funk felt like it lasted for days or weeks, often even after the issue was fixed. I would say by the time I went to bed last night I had quieted the worst parts of my mind and enjoyed a cup of tea and then slept very comfortable and well. Today waking up to a house that was 56 degrees was not a hardship, or even disconcerting. It just was, I turned on heaters, I made coffee and I was dressed warm. The speed bump is still happening but today I feel fine.
I wish I could talk to myself when I was younger and get Guy of the past to realize that he was not a failure for not being Superman in all things. In fact we often talk about the differences in our kids and our own childhoods and the hardships different in each experience. We never wanted our kids to have to go through some of what we did but maybe a bit of rough road is good for someone.
I am taken back to that day in the garage with my Grandpa Pope. I was having a moment and said out loud that I just felt like giving up. His response lives in my head now, I hear it every time there is a speed bump, every time I start to spiral. “That’s not what we do”
So yeah, speaking to my younger self, my current self and anyone that needs to hear it. Keep your head up
