The sun came out today. It beamed through my front windows and across the hard wood floors like it was stretching as far as it ever had.
My favorite tunes were on surround sound. I was making dinner for my family. The kids were running and jumping and laughing, all three of them, in the living room in my peripheral.
I opened the cupboard door to get out the ground mustard. And I smiled.
I smiled.
Somehow the air was clear around me. I wasn't bitter about the need to make dinner when all of my other To Dos weren't done. I wasn't procrastinating and waiting so it had to be a freezer meal again. Somehow I was feeling that feeling. Oh what is it? Fulfillment. And it almost seemed foreign it had been so long.
As I turned in the kitchen, pivoting with each progression of my meal, I felt light. Somehow I wasn't carrying the rock of Atlas on my shoulders. Somehow my world wasn't crashing in on me because of the dirt spots on the ground and the crumb in the toaster drawer. Somehow it was all going to be okay to have those imperfections under my watch care.
...
A friend told me recently, one of the few I talk to, that she started to celebrate when she was able to let imperfections go. Instead of trying and forcing to let go of the imperfect things around her, she would praise herself. "I'm so proud of you that you were able to walk away from the kitchen, knowing it wasn't in perfect condition before you left. Good job, self. Way to go. You can do it."
I worry now as I write my journal. I worry about the people that are reading and judging me and don't know what it's like to have Clinical Perfectionism like I do. I wonder about those people that just want so bad for me to "let it go" and "don't sweat the small stuff". The people that don't get it.
Oh how I wish I could.
When I'm sick, everywhere I look is a reminder that I'm a failure. The dust on the entertainment center, even though I dusted it yesterday. That dust tells me that not only is my entertainment center dusty, but what else in my life isn't in order. I'm also not cleaning the bathrooms and haven't for four weeks. I never make dinner. I haven't been out for a walk and to see the sun with the kids in several days but have kept them cooped up inside. One small imperfection is a downward spiral of failures because it's just not one failure to me, but it means my whole life is out of control.
My last therapy session, we talked about redefining failure. My therapist talked to me about how my life is really about choices since there are so many things I could do with my time. He asked me, when I see the dust, instead of seeing that as a failure, why not see it as a choice.
"Look at that dust. That dust means that I chose, with my time, to play with my kids and do puzzles with them today over dusting, even though the dusting hasn't been done in five weeks. That dust means I made a choice to choose best over good. Good job. Good choice."
We know from Sister Julie B. Beck that each day we are faced with too many opportunities to do good than there is time for. So about four years ago a switch went off and I made over my life and truly, madly, deeply, reordered my life into essential, necessary, and nice to do, and I have stuck to that gospel truth almost completely consistently since then. It clicked. And it made over my life.
So now, with my illness, I use that conviction from my life makeover to reward myself when I see the little failures. That is not a failure, but a choice I made to do something better with my life.
It seems like child's play, a no brainer, for probably most of the population. But for people like me, it's not that we don't want to do the more important or fun or meaningful things before the menial. It's just that our minds tell us life is out of control until we can get everything in control. And it becomes debilitating. And when we are so debilitated that we have gotten to the point of non-functional, we breakdown.
Retraining your thoughts is sometimes impossible. And I mean Not. Possible. Not! possible! I'm not saying this to be cliché. I'm saying this to try to emphasize that clinically, within my mind, to let go of things and force myself to not act on an impulse, is most of the time not possible. It's like this floating ball above my head that won't let me rest until I act on it.
If I have a question I want to ask someone and I've forgotten what it is, that ball floats above my head until I ask it and get an answer. If I have something I want to do but don't have a paper or my planner to write it down in, that ball floats above my head until I do, even if I forget what it was. That empty, floating, yet heavy ball of the unknown, floats above my head until I can get it in control. If I have an untidy house or an enormous To Do list, I can't relax, I can't feel peace, until it is all done.
And it is never going to be all done.
And if I forget what the balls are that are floating above my head, they don't just go away. They still float. All ten of them, then fifty, then one hundred, until I remember them and put them on a to do list or take care of them.
As so I am a collector. A collector of lists. A collector of impossible lists.
And those balls. One hundred balls. One hundred lists. They get heavy.
Probably it doesn't make sense. "Well just stop making lists. What's the worst that could happen? Is there an impending catastrophe if you don't take care of those balls?"
Yes. For me there is. It is called a mental breakdown.
…
Sunshine. Sunshine beaming in through my windows. And peace. Peace with the imperfections. Clarity. And a shield from the demons.
Happiness. Peace. I hadn't felt those in so long. And at the hardest hour of the day. 4 pm.
I danced with the kids. We laughed. They giggled. I swung them as we danced. I looked in Ainsley's eyes. I clapped and snapped and swayed. And when I returned to the kitchen, I was still smiling.
Somehow those beams of sunshine were just for me. Those beams stretching from the entry way and all the way back to our dance party. Those beams of sunshine that just got brighter and brighter. Those beams through my window were just for me.
I hadn't felt that feeling since last August.
