Last year, around this time, I wrote a guest blog post for Tracey Clark’s I am enough series. Two weeks ago, when I was stressing about all our routines changing, schools starting, work getting more hectic, I was thinking about this post. And all the other posts on my blog. Daily posts where I try to capture my family. My gratitude. Where I try to remember what’s good. Where I make myself pay attention to things I’d otherwise take for granted.
I was thinking about all this because on the Tuesday after labor day, I definitely didn’t feel enough.
No it’s not just that: I felt broken in every way.
I felt like I wasn’t enough of a mom to my kids and that my older one was acting up a bit more than I’d like and I didn’t have the tools to nip it in the bud as elegantly as I would have liked so I reprimanded him more often and more harshly than he deserved. Even as I saw it wouldn’t be effective long term.
I felt paralyzed with fear that my little one wouldn’t take to school and would just cry and cry. And that it would never ever work out.
I felt that the lunches I prepared were inadequate. Bland.
I felt stupid that I had to drag my husband along because I wasn’t sure I could figure out the new schools’ routines and drop off/pickup systems on my own. Or that I just needed him for inexplicable reasons.
I felt not enough at work when I kept asking stupid questions I should have known the answers to. When I was “discussing” things with some engineers and I had to put my foot down even as I was unsure of why. I felt like I was fighting a battle I was told to go into but when I got there I was alone. I was sinking. I was going to fail and take everyone down with me.
I felt I would never be able to find my way out.
I would never be good enough. I would never know, understand, do as well as some of my peers. I would never be the mom that had it all figured out. I could never be the wife who wasn’t unnecessarily needy.
I could go on and on. I felt like a failure and inadequate in all areas of my life. I couldn’t see any light. It was dark, dark, dark.
I was failing everything and everyone I ever cared about.
And I couldn’t see it getting better. Ever.
The day passed. But the feeling didn’t go away for a while. Even as I slowly figured things out, it dulled but it didn’t go away. It took several “better” days to squash the pain back and I know it’s there to rear its head when it finds me weak again.
I want you to know that I think it’s normal to have these days. Sometimes we feel it’s all dark. When I feel this way, I don’t even try to make sense of it anymore. I know these days come. No matter what Jake says to placate me, to show his love, I am not listening. I am not rational. It’s not about logic. It’s about losing all sense of logic.
For me, the best thing is to let myself feel it. Give Jake and others I love heads up and let them be there for me. Let them forgive me. Let them give me some space so I can slowly forgive myself, too. And make space to heal.
Because you know what? The good days always come, too. For most of us, these terrible days are rare. (Just like the euphoric ones.) And I think letting them take their course is much easier than fighting them.
That’s what I remind myself each time one of them comes to visit me. We all feel not-enough. We all strive to be loved. To be enough. To be wanted, loved, cared for. To matter. I think that’s a human need: to matter.
And we all *are* enough. Just the way we are. I truly believe that. We each have our own individual gifts in the world. Our own magic.
I think the trick is to not give in to those black days that try hide the truth and to pay attention to the millions of little extraordinary things in our life that clearly show how lucky we are. How we are enough in so many ways that matter.
