My husband once sat me down for a talk. Well actually, he cornered me in the vehicle on a drive to somewhere I can’t even remember, but the conversation is one I have not forgotten.
For starters, I have a kind considerate loving husband. I realize I am extremely blessed to have him in my life and even more so to have him alongside me facing each of life’s battles. Although he is always in my corner, today in this exact moment it feels like he is against me.
I hate confrontation… I know it is necessary at times but I find it altogether terrifying. My husband knows this about me which is precisely why he has trapped me in the vehicle. (Yep, I know what you were doing babe…I’m onto you.) I can’t run away, avoid, or distract either of us from this conversation. In this moment, it feels like a coldly calculated move by my hubby to do this to me. For real though, I am literally strapped to a seat right now and being forced to face my own personal torture. It may seem like I am being overly dramatic but this is honestly how I feel and tears are streaming down my face.
However, as I stated before, sometimes confrontation is necessary and it can even be a kindness. My husband is loving and knows what needs to be done. So here I am, trapped with nowhere to go and nothing to do. My husband is in control right now and thank God because it is exactly what I didn’t know I was needing.
I didn’t know this was part of the plan for the drive or I may not have gone along with it. Truthfully, I’m not even sure if he planned to bring this up or just saw an opportunity to finally approach me while we were in the vehicle.
“You are not yourself anymore,” he says.It is finally out there in the open. I feel defensive immediately. What does that even mean, I am not me anymore? How can that be possible? To be me don’t I just have to exist? What more does he want of me?
I give him a moment while these thoughts rush through my head and then basically demand an explanation. His response, “You are not like you anymore.” Frustration and a bit of anger are starting to bubble up because I don’t want to go there. I know what he is saying I just don’t want to admit it. Admitting it means facing it and I do not want to face my failure.
“You used to have a glow about you. You used to have an infectious happiness. You used to smile.” At this point, I just want him to stop talking. If he thinks I do not know these things about myself, he would be wrong. How could I not notice that I am no longer truly happy anymore or that I don’t laugh or smile like I used to? I do know this and it breaks my heart every single day. “It is gone, it is all gone,” he says aloud and I say the same silently to myself.
My husband is not saying any of this in a mean way, it only feels harsh because it is a painful truth. I have lost a part of myself. Watching my husband tell me this though, may be a low point for me. I thought I had carefully hidden what I was going through. I even attempt a futile argument with him, “I smile.” This is all I can truthfully say in disagreement with what he has told me.
I knew I still smiled. Trust me, I knew the smile was still there because I fake plastered it on my face each day. (So maybe I wasn’t making the best winning case right now, but I was right and he was going to have to fight me on it.) Why was I making this conversation so difficult… inside I was even begging myself to cooperate. I wanted to feel like me again! Yet, here we are with me arguing that I smile (albeit a fake smile which I’m not about to admit).
“No, you don’t. You lost your smile. You lost your genuine smile.” I had some tears before this point in the conversation however, now I was full-on crying. I could not believe he knew, I could not believe he could see part of the true me I was hiding. He was incredibly sweet and in a way, he was just talking and not even looking for me to respond to any of this right now. “You have a radiating smile. I don’t know what has happened or what is going on but I want that smile back.”
Now I know, I have completely failed. I am a failure. I was trying to hide my pain and clearly, it did not work. On the contrary to my intentions, I have caused more pain for myself and even more devastating to me is that it has been hurting those closest to me. In addition to realizing my failures, I am filled with shame and guilt. I feel like I have let down everyone around me and what was it for if I have not even been fooling them.
I wanted to seem like I had it all together. I did not want other people to see my pain and that I was completely burnt out with no joy left in me. I was overtired, overworked, and overwhelmed by the trap of my never ending to-do list. I can not keep up with doing it all and I have felt like I had to and sacrificed the wellbeing of my body, mind, and soul with my efforts.
My husband’s honesty opened up a deep conversation of the overwhelm I had been feeling and how I felt as if I was falling apart. I feared his response would be disappointment and agreement that I was failing. However, he took the time to listen to what was going on in my life and how it was leaving me feeling.
For a while, we spent time talking and I had some enlightening takeaways. I learned my husband was not expecting me to be perfect. For a perfectionist (if you were not already aware I am one) this was hard to understand how the person closest to me could see most of my faults and be alright with me “failing”. This also told me if the person who saw most of my faults and failures still loved me and was not looking for me to perfect, then no one else was and if they happened to be it did not matter anyway.
My plans to help everyone had left me drained with nothing left to give. I kept on giving up more of myself to check things off my to-do list but my heart was no longer present in my task. My husband told me this could be felt and it changed the whole outcome of what I was doing. For example, the times I was overtired from a long day and then raced around the house cleaning in a frustrated frantic way lost the beauty of taking care of my home. I was consumed with frustrated thoughts about my list but it came off as being less patient with my husband and upset at taking care of my home and him. In my mind doing these tasks was showing my care whereas on the contrary, it was creating a negative environment for everyone involved.
In addition, my constant hustle and bustle led to missing time with my family and especially quality time. My mind was stuck on the millions of things to be done and I was not truly present with my family and friends causing me to feel even more alone in all I did.
I thought my biggest failure in this situation was my failure to help. I was under the illusion my shortcomings in getting my to-do list done and my failed attempts at being everything to everyone was my real failure. The truth, I was failing to help but it was not others I was failing. I was failing to help myself.
A domino effect occurred in my thinking… my worry was failing to help others but the reason I could not help others was that I was not helping myself which was leading to more worry and less helping of others or myself. I had been going about it all wrong. I was even blaming myself for the wrong things.
I can not help others if I do not first fill myself up. I can not run myself to a breaking point or work constantly with no reprieve if I want to be a safe haven for others. I need to make myself a bit more of a priority to be able to sustain my mission to help, encourage, love, and inspire others. To help others be their best, I need to be my best. However, being my best does not require me to be perfect or to do everything all the time. I needed to release myself from being a task-master and taking care of everything. I set myself free from the chains I placed on myself!
My tears of shame, guilt, and failure transformed into tears of joy. I could be myself and be accepted and loved. I could be myself and it could be considered an even greater blessing to others. My failure was not asking for help which I have the ability to change going forward.
We all need help and we all need to learn to ask for it. In the nine months since this conversation took place with my husband, I have begun to lighten my load. I ask for his and other people’s assistance much more often and am left with feelings of love and being loved with room for more joy in my life. A beautiful blessing takes shape when you let people help you. We have the ability to lighten one another’s loads and then together the entire load is feasible to carry. Set down the things that are burdening you and find partners in life to walk alongside, carry the load, and drop it off with more ease than you ever knew was possible. It is time to let go of living in failure and take up a life filled with hope, love, and unending possibility.
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If there could be a word for this it would be AMEN!!!!! You are not the only one who puts so much on their plate to the point they loose their self along the way. This helped me realize that I am currently “failing” and have lost my joy and happiness in myself. I’ve had many comments from others about my “negativity” and that I wasn’t myself.... Morgan thank you for writing this! You’ve helped me recognize I too am failing to ask for help!