A return

I've decided to attempt to blog again, perhaps even daily. I don't share this blog with just anyone, and it's been a couple of years - but I am making an serious attempt to turn over a new leaf and improve myself. 

What a laugh, me trying to write my way to self-actualization. 

This is a pattern. 

I started using TalkSpace yesterday, in a last desperate attempt to quell my issues with stress, anger, and communication. I'm still in love. I still have my person. But I'm all of the things I've been writing for years, and each conversation that escalates to argument leaves me with the same reprimand: "I've been saying these things to you for years." 

I'm afraid of myself these days, because in all reality, my life is good. But I'm stuck in my head and I know I can and will do more damage to those closest to me. From my mouth, my words, my sighs, my screams. I know I've written about job changes and education and the general gist of my life here, but I'm actually in a really good place financially and career-wise. I returned to school for my dream job, something I knew I wanted to do since I was about thirteen. I am a nurse. I spend my days actively listening, providing an outlet in a lot of situations to people who have it much worse, at least physically, than myself. People are angry when they are not in control and are in pain. All of the customer service experience I've gained throughout my life has prepared me for the terrible things people say when they are scared and hurting. I'm running around all day and night, solving problems, and it's sometimes a quite thankless job. But I couldn't ask for anything better, I finally feel some sense of belonging and strive to provide for people all that I can. I bite my tongue when people are taking their anger out on me. I have a lot of good feedback from management and patients. I am gentle and I am a provider and advocate. I know I'm very good at my job. 

So why do I then go home and throw all of it out the window? This is what I'm trying to explore myself and with my new therapist. How can I spend all of this energy listening and thinking carefully before I speak for a paycheque, but not for someone who has my heart and built a nest with me? 

Do I take the "learn how to manage stress" road? Is it just about burnout? 

Or do I not love him? 

What's wrong with me? 

I'm terrified it's either all me, I'm broken beyond repair, I don't even hear myself being unkind and I can't understand it. The alternative is that he is broken, too. Or that I'm actually okay, and maybe someone else is being unkind to me. It's a mess in my head when I try to wade back through the muddy waters of our conversations. I feel like the words that leave my mouth are reasonable questions or comments, but I'm met with hurt and frustration. 

If I can't even understand what I'm doing wrong in the first place, I must be a lost case. 

I spend my mornings sitting outside, and I'll chain smoke, and I'll close my eyes and picture him. How good he is, and how I will be good to him when I see him next. I'll meditate, or something resembling meditation because I have no idea what I'm doing, and I'll feel a warmness in my belly and imagine him smiling, and us laughing together, and how the night will end positively and I will turn over from our nest and put a fat number "1" on a board that reads "it has been __ days since we had a screaming match and made each other cry." 

God, I hope my therapist can help me.

On anger and perfection

I am the strangest perfectionist I know.

The picture that usually comes to my mind when I think of a "perfectionist" is someone who is always very organized, almost always quite intelligent, and of course they are successful. I didn't  necessarily believe that someone could have a desire to be perfect and through that desire become angry and controlling - and sometimes even fail at doing things right.

I realized that I have a great desire to make sure that things are always running smoothly. This isn't always because I hate confrontation or have trouble finding solutions for problems, but the best way I can think to describe it is a craving for efficiency. I don't like it when things could be going smoothly but someone, somewhere along the way, made an error or didn't make an effort. I can accept that I can't control everything, but nothing puts a damper on my day more than someone not pulling their weight.

So sometimes when I find the broken link along the chain of "things that should be going great for me/my job/etc. today," I'm really angry. Someone didn't think to communicate effectively or even at all. Someone didn't order something we ran out of at work. Someone had an excuse not to do something very important that is now going to fuck it up for everyone else. Instead of trying to empathize with the reasons why something didn't go as planned, or ignoring it, or anything else that's probably more helpful - I pull the extra weight and resent everyone for it. I can stew and hold a grudge for an entire work day if I really don't think someone listened or took the necessary steps to prevent a problem. And I think deep inside, I'm feeling righteous because I knew better than someone else did and I know that I'll swoop in to fix the problem someone else created.

To make things better, something about waking up on any Wednesday morning puts me in a terrible mood. The first thing that puts a bump in my road on a Wednesday will make you wish you had never met me at all. The exact same scenario could come up on a Tuesday or a Monday and I will be fine, but say a prayer if it's Wednesday. I've been hyper aware of my mid-week grumpiness and have been trying to take extra care to remember to breathe, tell myself it won't matter later, all of the mindful solutions I've learned to make sure my heart doesn't expire on me. So after a few weeks of being a little bit less "Satan" to my co-worker, I said goodbye today and asked if I had been as mean lately and if I could do anything else to improve.

I was hoping for something positive. I was pleading for a pat on the back and encouragement that I'm heading in the right direction. Instead I was met with a pause before, "it's not that you're being mean today. That's just you being Sarah."

Maybe this has multiple interpretations, or the word choice wasn't exactly the sentiment they wished to express, but for now; this is crushing me.

It's not that I'm mean for a good reason, or on a certain day of the week, or when the stars align just so.

It's just who I am to some people.

I've watched over time as some people have regarded me with respect and complimented my abilities and work ethic, to eventually stop saying positive things and instead make jokes about my controlling and angry attitude. I don't want to be the butt of "it must be that time of the month" jokes every day, but that's who I have been more often than not. I threw a temper tantrum last week over something that went a little screwy with my computer. This is not normal behaviour, not for me, not for anyone.

I value working hard and well - but not over respect and sanity. I am desperately trying to learn how to balance caring about what I produce without alienating others or worrying about whether they have the same output.

This bit of writing isn't going to have a happy ending where I reveal how I've solved my problem. I'm certainly a work in progress.