That’s what she told me; my therapist told me this today. She then asked me, “What are your expectations for yourself?”
I felt dumb. I sat there not knowing the answer. I flashed back to childhood–
I’m sitting on the carpet; my mother is sitting in a Lazy Boy, rocking a fat baby boy with a bottle in his mouth, my step-dad sits, relaxed on the couch, sprawled out with the bible on his leg, splayed open. His brows are knit as he struggles to hold the run-on sentence in an understandable cadence. My mother turns from staring blankly into the stained glass lamp beside her, “Alexis?” She barks my name.
My whole body jumps. “Alexis! What was your dad saying?”
I say, “Um…” First of all, he’s not my dad and now I’m stuck on that fact. Second of all, the stories make no sense, the way he reads is garbled, he mispronounces the word grace by saying it, “Graith.” How can I be expected to focus? She’s red in the face now.
“Alexis, weren’t you even listening??” She’s rolling her eyes and stink-eyeing me at the same time. I feel so ashamed but I do not know what for. She lifts her right lip in a curl under her nose, which flares as she turns away from me with disgust and says to my older brother, ” what was your dad just reading to us?” My brother pipes in knowing every last detail and even a moral to the whole thing. I sneer at him in disgust. My mother doesn’t look at me, she smiles at my brother and puffs up in her chair like a hen.
“See Alexis? Your brother can listen.” She’s looking at me from the corner of her eye, still beaming that side of her face to him.
She goes on, “You’d better listen or you’re headed for trouble. Do you hear me? I’ll be checking again, you’d better be listening, next time.” She turns away from me, again disgusted with me. I was trying so hard to listen! How could I do it any better? My stepfather began reading again after giving me a repulsed, smug grin. I buckled down harder, taking in each word and losing the meaning as soon as I heard the next, and I know next time she’s going to ground me indoors all day for not understanding or listening.
I snap out of it, I’m here. It’s 2021 and I’m in my late forties; I’m not under ten years of age. This is my bedroom, my therapist is looking at me, smiling. “Do you think maybe you’re willing to set yourself on fire to keep the family warm?”
She tells me, “Remember the spoons analogy? How many spoons do you give yourself for the day? How many spoons are left for you by noon? It’s okay if you need to let them learn consequences by eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on no dishes. They’ll eventually learn to do their dishes. It’s ok to refill your cup when you recognize you’re running low and are short tempered. All you need to be is good enough, you can’t be perfect, Alexis. That’s obviously not working for you, and it’s honestly unattainable.”
They’re choosing their own adventure, she told me. When they decide to over-ride my guidelines (such as no internet until chore is finished), they choose the consequence. My issue is becoming far too involved in their drives and decisions; I’m feeling like I need to be a police officer –but here I am thinking cops overstep boundaries and are only needed in emergencies. I don’t want to control my children, I want their home life to reflect that world they’ll meet in reality. I can’t hover over them, make sure they get things done and I can’t take the things they’re doing personally right now. I mean, I can but I will suffer if I do.
I’m outnumbered and I know it. Just like I tell others, “just stand up, you’ll topple their card table” about corporations and big pharma, my children could topple my card table. But, my card table is covered in essentials –I have no playtime, and that, my therapist tells me, is my biggest problem right now. I need to set aside “me time.” I need to exert self-care in order to keep semblance. I’m learning all this stuff new, my mother didn’t know it to role-model it for me. Like me, she was raised in trauma, but unlike me she never dug out of the layers she’s buried beneath. This is new territory. If I were to dare say the things my children toss at me, my parents would have slammed through plaster walls. My kids will get childhoods different from mine; it may be tough, and maybe my childhood was preparation for this present job I’m working (parenting). Perhaps I had to grow the thick skin my mother and her husband gave me in order to shoulder the abuse youths can dole out in rages. I don’t know, but I’m taking some of them personally, and that’s okay.
“I need you to know this, Alexis,” my therapist said, “You are giving me 100% proof that you’re 100% normal, and I know that after a lifetime of believing you’re crazy, that may feel odd.”
I sobbed. “I just wrote it down in my journal,” I told her, “thank you, I really need to believe this.”
“You are normal,” and with that, we said good day until next week and the bubble that had been bursting in my chest at 10am was now soothed, questions answered, and a feeling like I could go on came over me.
I am normal, I am not crazy; the people who cast “you’re crazy” onto others are the ones making everyone crazy.