Fearing the Good

I've had this problem...I think always, but at the very least, since my life turned upside down with my thyroid disease in high school. That problem is - I fear things being too good. In the days before my thyroid self destructed, things were...kind of great, as high school goes. I was pretty. That sounds vain, it IS vain, but it's also true. I was pretty. I was fairly well liked. I played soccer - not particularly well, but I was on the team and the other girls were reasonably tolerant of my mediocrity. I had fun friends. I even had a cutie pie boyfriend on the Varsity basketball team. You guys? He drove me to school, let me wear his Letter jacket, and took me to Prom as a freshmen. It was wicked awesome (to use language from the time). But as my thyroid begin its slow ruination of my Camelot, and I didn't yet know what was making me so crazy and so HOT (temperature-wise - my appearance was toilet bound in a HURRY), things went a little haywire. I broke up with this boyfriend - a move that confounded my mother right up until I met my husband some 13 years later. I lost my desire to play soccer. I guess you had to know me at the time to understand why this would be surprising. I lost interest in school. Even more shocking. I became increasingly isolated in general. I would spend long hours alone in my room, with just my Joey McIntyre poster for company (Shut up. Like you didn't have one.). I knew, deep in my core, that something was WRONG with me. It just took a long, long time to figure out what.

When we FINALLY did figure out what, things got better. And worse. I felt better. I started sleeping again, I felt a normal temperature most of the time. My brain worked again. But I also gained 30 lbs (in addition to the 30 I'd gained when my appetite went berserk). My crazy behavior had driven away most of my friends, and there was not a boy in sight who wanted anything to do with my chubby, shy self. The truest of my friends stuck by me - which is why they are still in my life now, some two decades later. My family was awesome, as my family always is. But that time in my life was incredibly traumatic. Maybe what I've outlined above seems really surface to people. I don't know. What I know is that the person I'd thought I was didn't exist anymore, and that is a rough place to live at 16.

Since then, I've had this subconscious (and sometimes not so subconscious) fear of things being too good. When E and I got engaged, I became CONVINCED that he would perish in a fiery plane crash before we could make it to the alter (he didn't), or that he would finally realize that what an ex of mine had said about me (that I'm a "needy, high maintenance bitch") was true, and he'd bail. He didn't. In fact, he will read that sentence and fire up the ire toward that particular rider of the tech bubble all over again for saying something so nasty to me once upon a time. Because E is kickass like that.

But that fear of too much good persists. When Tiny E was born, the joy of TWO beautiful babies was so unbearable that I was convinced I didn't deserve it, and that something would shatter it. I was suffocating on terror, as is pretty well documented in this space.

So, maybe that's why I'm so terrified these days. We are finally planning a move into a home in the town we've wanted to move to for years, and I finally have a job I really care about.

And the job is another can of worms, really. Because somewhere along the way at my old job, I came to believe what people were telling me - that I wasn't good enough, or smart enough. My professional confidence was non-existent by the time I left there. And maybe THAT is why I feel like I don't deserve good things, professionally.

My point with all this navel gazing is this. I DO deserve to be happy. I'm a good person. I'm a good (though not perfect) friend. I'm a good (though not perfect) mother and daughter. I'm a good (though not perfect) employee. That last one is a doozie - I have a really hard time remembering that imperfect can still be good. And even good enough.

Sometimes, in life, we get a little lost. But it's good to find ourselves again.

Soon, it'll be a year that my Dad's been gone. I'm working my way back to the girl he was so proud of. I hope he can see me, and that he likes what he sees. I'm working really hard on liking it more, myself.