Stefan says that I do not give myself enough credit for the things that I do. I suppose he is right, but it’s hard to view myself that way, because I feel like I do what I do naturally and without much thought. In other words, it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice. And why should I be given credit for something I do naturally and without sacrifice? To me, it’s the same as giving me credit for being five foot six with green eyes. I have no control over that. It just is what it is.
Now, if I were working three jobs so that we could save enough money to move somewhere like, oh, say,
I am not used to receiving credit, so it feels foreign to me when Stefan tells me to stop and look around and see all that I have done and achieved. He credits me for the roof over our head and all the amenities that go with it. He sees it as a huge thing I am doing for the good of us, while I see it as doing a no-brainer.
In fact, I often feel that I am not doing enough. I worry a lot about things that do not seem like they are in place. I hate to use the word “worry,” but it fits here. My worry runs like a ticker tape in the back of my head all the time, like those news tickers at the bottom of the television screen. It’s hard to ignore them. You have to force yourself to pay attention to the real story going on, and even if you manage to achieve that, you still see that ticker tempting you out of the corner of your eye. You are always aware of the ticker, even when you don’t want to be.
So this ticker has been running on autopilot in the back of my brain for many years. I kind of got used to it. For a long while, I managed to ignore it successfully. But ever since I started this contract gig almost a year and a half ago, I keep glancing at that ticker. Nobody else can see it except for me.
The ticker broadcasts nothing but bad news about the future. It tells me I am not making enough money, and that I am not saving enough money. It reminds me I have no health insurance. It tells me I am taking a gamble that I am not prepared to lose and that makes me very ill at ease.
Since this ticker has been broadcasting the same news for so long, I’ve become accustomed to my thoughts and feelings I get when I see it, and although I worry, I don’t give voice to my worries, because my brain tells me it’s all in my head. I should be happy with my successes in life. I’ve done well for myself and I continue to do so. So why do I feel uneasy and unable to achieve peace of mind?
I’ve been having this argument with myself for quite a while, and even those arguments have become a single thought, an automated thing I carry out every day. All this clanging happens at a subconscious level. Or so I thought.
What I didn’t know was that the fire alarm was going off, and although I was ignoring it, telling myself it was a false alarm, it was actually impacting my life. Stefan is used to asking me, “Are you okay?” because unbeknownst to me (thanks, Denial, for being such a close friend), I am most often distracted or I seem a little “off.” When I say I am all right, I am not lying. I am okay, at least as okay as someone can be who has gotten used to being on fire all the time and thinks the circumstances are normal.
As this contract draws to a close later this year, I have begun putting more focus on that ticker. I didn’t equate my ill feelings with the fact that I have been ignoring an innate need; that my generalized unhappiness was caused by me not giving voice to what was going across that ticker.
In a moment of “weakness” (and I use this term sarcastically, because I was not being weak; I was being strong; I was being weak by holding out this long), I let Stefan peak inside my head the other week. He clearly heard all the alarms and smoke was going everywhere. He couldn’t believe all that was going on in my head all the time, and he didn’t understand why I never mentioned it.
I never mentioned it because it had become so normal for me that I didn’t think anything of it. Either that, or since it’s on my mind all the time, I don’t realize that I am not verbalizing my thoughts (I think this is the guilt-side of me that I let prevent me from verbalizing when I should).
Well, all of that is about to change. Stefan took one look at what was causing the alarm, and rescued me. Although I view it as a huge sacrifice, he does not. He sees it as simply doing what you would do for someone you love. I’ve been doing the equivalent of saying, “Ow, my finger hurts,” once in passing, and then never mentioning it again. Meanwhile, my finger is swelling up and turning purple and hurts every day until one day, many weeks later, I say, “My finger still hurts” (of course, I wait until the pain becomes unbearable). So then Stefan goes to look at it and sees I have a huge sliver deeply embedded in my finger and he wonders how I dealt with the pain all that time.
It is time to pull out the sliver with the tweezers, while I look at him heroically. It hurts, yes, to pull that sliver out, but we both know we will feel so much better afterwards.
We are both consciously aware of what it says on that ticker, and it is not something to be ignored anymore. I simply must find permanent work. I will sleep better at night, knowing I am indispensable, and valuable enough for a company to invest in me. Sometimes I still try to fool myself into thinking it’s not that big of a deal, because I’m afraid of the pain I’m going to feel when it comes time to pull that sliver out. But we both know I will get better quickly after the big pinch. And the big pinch right now is facing the almost inevitable fact that we are most likely going to have to move in order for me to find permanent work.
I do not want to move. Rather, I wish we could just click our heels and be there already, completely skipping over the whole find a job, get myself out there, try to sell the house, try to find a house, try to move everything to the new place and get settled in part. I am scared because I’m still licking my wounds from the last move, and I don’t feel financially comfortable with moving, yet I know if I don’t do something soon, I’m going to be feeling a lot more pain.
If Stefan hadn’t been as observant and persistent as he is, I wouldn’t be writing this blog right now. I wonder when, if ever, I would have written it?
So Stefan is standing there, tweezers in hand, trembling a little because he does not like pain (nor being the cause of it), telling me, “It will be all right. We just have to get through this, and you’ll feel a lot better.” He is setting aside his fears and any squeamishness so I can get better and I am putting my trust in him that despite my wanting to ignore the alarms, he won’t let me anymore and that he will help me, because I’m afraid I’m going to feel awfully guilty. I’m not used to someone else making sacrifices for me and I know I’m going to feel guilty that my “need” is going to cause us much angst during the move process. Sometimes I feel so guilty it’s hard to breathe. But that’s just because I haven’t given myself, or my thoughts, much credit over the years.
It is also easy for me to start feeling guilty because I think, “If I had just said something a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now!” And I start getting on my own case for being a slave to my own servitude nature, for not wanting to “make waves” and for not giving credence to my own needs.
This just goes to show how you think you know yourself, when in fact, you do not. I have made tremendous strides over the last couple of years and I am very proud of myself for the changes I have made. Obviously, there is still room for improvement! But I think whenever I start getting down on myself and start feeling guilty, I will remind myself of Stefan’s words, and force myself to credit where credit is due.
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