I think the joy about adulthood isn’t the dessert for dinner or watching TV for hours on end on Saturday, though those things are pretty awesome.
(As an aside, doing the things I desperately wished my parents would have let me do as a kid has never once gotten old. Seriously. And I’m going to do the same withholding with our daughter, because she needs to learn to have a sense of time and place and responsibility, but mostly because she’ll never enjoy those sort of indulgences until she’s earned them as an adult. But oh yeah. Love ice cream as a meal. Totally rocks.)
I think the joy for me has been knowing when I have it good. I don’t know that you understand any of that when you’re a kid. You can’t possibly, lack of experience and all that. I keep thinking of that chorus from Leonard Cohen’s Anthem:
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
My own struggle with the need to be perfect is, quite frankly, right up there with the body image brouhaha that I hope to help my daughter to avoid. Wishing and wanting perfection are such wastes of time, and you miss all of the good stuff when you look at the dark days as a curse, rather than a blessing.
Saturday was one of those days.
I was tired, I napped all day, I never left the couch and my frustrations with money and responsibility got the better of me. I went to that dark and lonely place that somehow I thought I could only cure with Law & Order reruns. Admittedly, they often do the trick, but not this day.
I used to have these days a lot, and in hindsight I see much of them as my own doing, rather than something natural. I didn’t handle stress well, and was generally allowing other people, things and experiences define who I was. I had no backbone. I was in my 20s, and refused to acknowledge the messes I’d made for myself. It took me a long time, a lot of horrible mistakes and a ridiculous amount of hard work to just get on with it.
So when they creep up now and again, it makes me stop in my tracks and catch my breath a bit. Those were dark days, and so I suppose any hint that they might return causes a bit of panic in me.
I’ve learned to focus on the positive, not the negative. I don’t know anyone whose life isn’t touched by a hardship or five, but in the past four years I’ve gotten luckier than I deserve to be, so it’s tough to complain about even the things that are worth complaining about. Plus, I doubt anyone wants to hear it anyway – though judging by some of the spammy, trolly comments I’ve filtered lately, it looks like some of you would be much, much happier if I spent time at this space talking about the ugly, sad parts of my life.
But yeah. Sometimes those things catch me, and it’s usually because I’m avoiding them completely. Scott sat down next to me and I looked at him and said, “I’m not doing too well right now.” And all of the anxiety and fear I’d been feeling came pouring out. We grabbed the dog and went for a long walk through the neighborhood. I kept prattling on, and together we figured out how to address the anxiety.
The rest of the night ended up being pretty great.
I knew that being pregnant would make some of this anxiety and sadness I’ve battled resurface a bit. All of these hormones can play tricks on you. It’s part of the gig, I suppose, and I’m certainly not the only pregnant woman who experiences it.
This is all to say that, you know, I have really bad days, too. But mostly? Mostly I have really good, really hard-fought, really fantastic days, and because of the really bad, really awful imperfect days I had when I was younger, I can see the good and appreciate it for all that it’s worth.
