11/22/09

Why 3 posts in one evening, after the lull? I've decided to return back to the basics - back to me and this little blog and my thoughts. I've felt a lot of pressure lately to only feel the right things, or to only say the right things, and especially, to only write the right things...and it hasn't felt so great. It doesn't help when I receive feedback that what I say has upset people!

However, I've worked through all of those feelings - and above all, the feeling of guilt that I always carry with me, for whatever I do, always. I don't know WHY I have such a truckload of guilt to push around everywhere - maybe some of it is circumstantial, maybe some of it is learned, and maybe some of it is just biochemical. Who knows.

I'm tired of it, though, and the other day I had a breakthrough. Yay, me!

I looked at myself in the mirror and thought of the many times I have spent wishing I was something different...or that I had a different path for this life, or different parents (for example, one that wouldn't die so early, and one that wasn't such a pain in the ass sometimes). And after weeks of complaining, and even praying, and thinking, thinking, thinking, this thought came to me - SO MUCH of this stuff was put in place before I was even born, and maybe, if I think about it, way before that. All that I can do is take what I have been given, and make something of it - hopefully, something wonderful.

I can't change the basics about the way I look just as I can't change my BRCA mutation...and with that BRCA mutation came my parents and whatever baggage they were carrying around (physical and emotional). It's possible that their issues (or, mostly, my Dad's) were so big and so inherent that he, too, could only take what he had been given and try to make something of it...just as we all do.

And suddenly, it all went away. The worry about my feelings - is it right to feel this way? Why do I feel this way? Why is my life this way? I sort of no longer care.

I also sort of no longer care what people think of me and how I am dealing with everything that has been given to me, too...which is amazing in and of itself. If you think I am wrong in what I say or what I do - well, you haven't lived my life, you haven't been there. On top of the fact that I know that I spent an inordinate amount of my energy and thought and time trying to make my father feel proud, and loved, and respected by me in his lifetime - and I know I succeeded - I do have a husband who has been with me since I was just a very young pup. It finally sunk in that I have someone who has LIVED so much of my life with me, who has loved me through even the worst of times, and who remembers all of the struggles along the way (through which he supported me, poor, poor guy). My little miseries were his miseries, too.

And as weird as this is to say, some of those little miseries should be gone now. If you can't have your father here on this earth with you, well, that does suck. But at least I shouldn't have to spend even another second worrying if I am being a good enough daughter...and why it couldn't just be easy between us, or what I did wrong, or what I should be doing that I'm not. Because hey, I'm no longer a daughter! I should be focusing my energy on my other roles now, and not beating myself up about what once was.

And wow...here's something funny (speaking about other roles!) I am a mother...and someone just called because she is having a hard time falling asleep at her friend's house, so I need to go get her! I'll finish this thought another night.