Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Failing and Being Wrong

I'm having a bit of a low-point this week.  You know how a couple of genuinely disappointing experiences can suddenly flavor your world so that even small disappointments, that you'd normally rebound from almost instantly, start to feel like an endless flow of lemon juice on your paper-cut? You get trapped in a spiral of negativity that quickly feels like it's eating you alive?  And suddenly all of your happy thoughts have holes in them, rendering them useless for floatation. It's usually the sort of situation that is resolved by a crying jag, a good-night's-sleep, and possibly a cyclical hormone shift.  Or, if it goes on long enough, by therapy and anti-depressants.

Hopefully that's not where we're headed.  But I've spent two weeks under the influence of seasonal allergies, a head cold and a sinus infection, dealing with the abbreviated mental/emotional whiplash of ending one semester and starting the next a week later, all while having certain hopes dashed and certain facets of my self-defined identity rendered insecure when, suddenly, decisions and actions I felt sure I was prompted to make fell apart and left me with no answers. I'm in a place where nothing about my life feels safely positive.  None of my relationships are reliable sources of positive emotional energy, at least not the kind where you can push the button for more anytime you need it, like the pain-med button in a hospital room. I'm not definitively good at anything I'm attempting to pull of right now.  I'm regularly confronted with my failings as a student, parent, friend, and spouse. And by regularly, I mean almost constantly.

It's a humbling, humbling place. I got more upset than I should have by negative feedback on one of my final papers, and couldn't seem to allow for the fact that I was interrupted probably 4 or 500 times while writing and editing it. It is hard, hard, hard for me to be in a place where my best is treated as obviously inadequate. Hard - primarily because I have so many nagging doubts (self-doubting doubts) that I have a hard time silencing even when I'm not dealing with negative feedback.  Sometimes I am just too delicate for real-life. And regularly putting myself through growth-inducing experiences has done nothing to toughen me up. I can't figure myself out.

Anyway - that's the gist of my current bluesy spot.  I have no shortage of them so far in this grad-school adventure.  Every time someone says to me, "How do you do it all?" My answer is "Not very well."  But I still haven't quit.  Quitting would be perhaps the only thing more emotionally devastating than sticking to it.  The whole reason I'm here is because I hate that I quit before, and if I quit now then I may never manage to disassociate myself as a quitter. That is sometimes the only thing that sounds more depressing than pushing through yet another semester or term of being a chronically sleep-deprived, distracted, inadequate mother who can't seem to write very well.  So then, onward and upward.

The good news: these Ted Talks Exist at moments like this.



1 comment:

...life, the way of the hummingbird said...

you have me all choked up, because i recently feel just like that, only i cannot put it in such eloquent words ... i for one think you are a wonderful writer, which if in part why i enjoy your blog so much. you know i am in awe of your courage and willingness to allow yourself to come up short, even if that means it may very well tear you apart emotionally. it's not that you are truly okay with coming up short, but you are wise enough to know that it is the only way to be able to try for success in the first place. as silly as it sounds, when things get super rough, i visit the fantasy of that happy place where we sit by a cup of tea reminiscing over all the things that we are proud of having accomplished, and remind myself that the only way getting there is by accomplishing them first ... so, deep deep breath, a good cry, a cup of tea, a prayer and try again!

i love you - for being a wonderful, caring friend, an inspiration and for all the courage you have given me

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