Enemy

There have been many articles written about the whole idea of not being a superwoman, all packed with touchy-feely bullshit about how women need to support each other and not be so goddamned competitive.  I don't know about all of you, but this just makes me feel even more like shit because I'm doing it wrong.  I am totally competitive and constantly feel inadequate.

I make my kids homemade bread?  Someone else is growing their own organic, GMO free wheat.  I researched area daycares to find the best fit for our family?  Someone else is homeschooling their child and teaching them Mandarin, Spanish, and how to make macrame.  (Does anyone ever actually use macrame?  What IS it?  See, I am even more inadequate because not only do my children not make macrame, I don't even fucking know what it is.)  I started running again?  Someone else just completed their sixth marathon.  I helped a client verbalize their feelings about a trauma?  Someone else helped theirs function well enough with schizophrenia to hold a full time job.

It goes on and on.  This has nothing to do with societal pressures, the mommy wars, being catty or bitchy.  This is strictly from within.  This is all from the voices in my head.  I am my own worst enemy.  I am the one who tears myself down.  I am never good enough for myself.

I have been this way  since God was a boy.  I would hold myself up to unrealistic expectations and beat the shit out of myself when I did not meet them.  The problem was, I usually could meet them so that just reinforced my unrealistic expectations for myself.  The cost, though...well, just my sanity (or what little I do possess...)

I have felt myself recently slipping into beating myself up.  I work full time.  I have three children.  I have way too much debt.  I have three dogs and a cat.  I have a house to care for.  I'm helping to organize a benefit for a friend's son.  I'm going to run in a 5K.  I'm a little busy, maybe.

But.

But I still mentally harangue myself when my house is not clean.  Hell, I still compare my house to that of people who probably make triple what I do.  I compare myself to other men's wives regardless of whether she is someone my husband would even find attractive anyways.  I beat myself up because I am not feminist enough (a REAL feminist would not have these concerns!), because I am not trained enough as a therapist, because my children aren't in enough activities, because we are not as financially sound as I would like us to be, because I don't coupon, because my family sometimes does not eat dinner together, because I don't have the energy to start a small business, because the dogs are overdue for going to the vet, because I require coffee to make it through the morning, because I hate mornings, because sometimes I want to leave work to get home to my family, because sometimes I don't want to leave work BECAUSE OF my family,  because I must be a horrible human being if I have the very real experience of my family driving me crazy, because I get depressed when I think about all of the evil in the world, because I don't have time to do all of my hobbies, because I have not picked up my violin in over a year, because I don't take my children to the library enough, or the movies, and we have never been to Disney, and, and...

It is me.  My thoughts might be fueled by society and flamed by mental illness.  But I am my own worst enemy and I sometimes feel helpless to stop it.