Everything You're Doing is Right

This past month was unusual for me. There was a lot of change and upheaval, but in a fun way. Work, sports, travel, etc. I got to go on two trips to places that tanned my skin (even with sunscreen on!), and I got to visit those places with people I love, all from varying eras of my life. God, I have been so lucky. These past few years, it's felt that the luck was all on one side of the spectrum (bad), but I have to recognize that, even though our country is falling to shit and we’re going to war to make bad billionaire guys more money, I have had some personal good luck. It feels a little icky to acknowledge that, but historians are going to need to know what we were all doing at the fall of our nation, so I’m documenting it here. 

Living in the moment is hard. I’ve written about this before. In fact, everything I write about seems to cycle on itself, each lesson I’m learning containing echoes of the previous. I keep expecting myself to be changed, better, new for the long run. And yet, this one feels different every time I “learn” it. 

On one of the trips, an unofficial motto was adopted: “Everything you’re doing is right.” Or “you can’t do anything wrong on this trip.” As in, do whatever you want because there are no expectations on you right now. I mean, what a gift that was. Did I want to take a nap? Or maybe swim in the ocean? Or maybe rent a chair and buy an overpriced drink and sit under an umbrella? All of those were correct, possible options for me, or for any of the other women on the trip. 

Maybe the most freeing: I didn’t need to make sure anyone else was having a good time because everyone was in charge of her own feelings. At some point in the past - how old is my oldest kid? 9? - ok 9 years, I appointed myself the emotional guardian of my family members. I decided it was my job to make sure everyone was happy. Typically, I spend a lot of time and energy trying to anticipate everyone’s needs before I make any of my own decisions. Then I get resentful when I don’t end up doing anything I want to do, even though no one asked me to do this. I didn’t even realize I did it until these two trips. I recognize that I never had to put myself so firmly in last place, priorities-wise, but it became a pattern that was harder and harder to break as time went on. I suppose this is the phenomenon commonly referred to as “playing the martyr.” 

I’m realizing that martyrs are dead, and I’m not.

So here I am, back from the dead (I’m undead?), trying to figure out how to be alive in this way. 

Now, let’s be fair to all parties. There are reasons I developed this habit: societal pressures, need for control, and it’s easier with babies and then gets harder as kids get older. My lovely, sweet husband has long adopted the Ethel Beavers attitude of “Do whatever you want,” which he likes to say to me in a mock-Ethel voice that either makes me laugh or roll my eyes, depending on the day. He has, more than once, held both my hands and some extremely intense eye contact while saying (like this), “Do. What. Ever. You. Want.”

That has, in the past, sent me on spirals of thoughts like, “Well what do I even want? What does wanting something even feel like? What I want is for everyone to be happy and then leave me alone, but that’s too dependent on children being rational, which is a pointless endeavor so…” 

Now, what does this matter? Maybe you’re judging me a bit, thinking, “Geez, I didn’t realize you were this lame/old/held down by patriarchy.” That’s not an entirely helpful line of thought, bud, but it’s understandable. Internalized misogyny runs deep and needs examination. I whole-heartedly reject the idea that the home is the woman's domain in a marriage. But it's so easy to fall into the pattern that the mom is the go-to or default parent. The boys ask me to get them things, and I do it. Or the school/birthday party organizer/sports league calls or emails me first, and then whatever tasks they're giving out become my tasks. Someone's name and number has to go first on those forms. And it seems like the school calls the mom first no matter who's number is written down.

The “women can have it all” messaging of our formative years kind of screwed some of us up, and we’re having to unlearn things. We were told how great and strong and smart we are, how we can be whatever we want to be as long as we're willing to work for it. But we also watched our moms be perfect wives and mothers, so we were pretty sure we still needed or wanted to do that. Millennial women aren’t the first to work full-time by any stretch, but it seems to have become much more widespread, while the mental load and care of the home still seems to rest with us too. 

There’s been a lot of discussion around this recently. I’m sure some families are making changes in how house work is distributed. I hope so, anyway. This need-anticipating is a small piece of that whole puzzle. If you can anticipate, you can plan. If you can plan, you can schedule. If you can schedule, you can have control, and the home can run smoothly. Plus the pressure feels ratcheted up because of Instagram. Goddamn social media.

So here’s what I’ll say about this: you are important. You deserve to do things for yourself, to have desires (which feels like a gross word, but I mean it like, you deserve to want things). Because everything you're doing is right. You don't have to plan it all for everyone. You can read your book while quietly listening to music. You can work out without worrying about what everyone else is doing. You can live your own life alongside the lives you helped to create. You don't have to have it all. But you can have as much as you want.