I didn’t see or talk to anyone in my family Thanksgiving day. I couldn’t find it in myself to be the bigger person and call: Hey sorry I hand-grenaded your holiday plans! Let me call and bask in how not-family it was for you. When no one called me, I let it molder.
Two days later, I called my mom and apologized. We hardly remembered it was Thanksgiving, was my mother’s breezy answer from across the country. I spent the day sorting out your grandmother’s estate. Which might not sound that bad, unless you know my mom, in which case you also know that doing accounting/legal/bills drudgery is her most reviled task, taken to new lows since it involves the death of someone she loved.
Meanwhile, my MIL came to our house. She was perfectly kind, made a turkey, played endlessly with the kids. I could hardly bear it.
Ideally, one should be, you know, thankful, for every scrap of goodness during this particular holiday, especially when segments of one’s life are going shitty. Failing that, one should at least have the decency to fake it reasonably well for the joy of others. Instead I was an inconsolable, moody asshole. I couldn’t even muster the grace to offer an explanation to my MIL. To do so would have been implicitly or explicitly asking an adult to forgive me/ tell me I was OK/ etc. The idea felt like drinking poison.
I spent a lot of time considering what it would mean if my own approval is good enough, if I stop twisting my life in order to win someone else’s OK. It made me realize how tied up in approval seeking I am, and how those are perhaps good skills for a child, or even an adolescent, but not for a woman who turns 39 this month.
To be motivated primarily by acceptance, for me at least, is to be in a constant state of hiding, of being ready to jettison aspects of myself that don’t meet someone else’s cut. It feels incredibly lonely, and weirdly incompatible — by always seeking acceptance, I’m painfully aware of how the whole of me never actually sustains OKness.
I’ve been frightened about where my place in the world will be if I let go of all these approval-seeking behaviors. Will I be one of those angry middle-aged women who (I previously thought) embarrass themselves with their outspoken ideas and their lack of toeing the social graces line? Eventually, though, I always come back to this: I could continue to think like a little kid, but that does not keep me safely in the position of being a little kid. It doesn’t keep me youthful/ beautiful/ acceptable. It just makes me a weird middle-aged woman who never matured.
Recently, Middle’s had an ongoing health scare, my BFF (who knows I am Anne! Gak!) separated from her husband and is moving away, another friend is going through a horrible divorce and has to move, an acquaintance my age who had a low-level cancer issue went to surgery and they zipped that person right back up without taking out anything because HOLYSHITCANCEREVERYWHERE, something I spent a lot of time working on failed, and a distant relative died. So pretty much, my world right now has a thick smog of GENERALLY NOT OK hanging over it. I’m just sitting here trying to breathe and be OK with the NOT OK, and not to slip back into asking for someone besides me to say if it’s OK. (It doesn’t take a genius to see it’s not. Not OK is OK.) (That is my mantra.)
It’s incredible to me, that before I saw this damaged, approval seeking aspect of myself, some part of me must have understood 1) how to be healthier and 2)been looking out for me. This blog is my jettisoned personality traits. Instead of truly losing that part of myself, it got saved. Better, actually — it’s been nurtured by all of you.
Like I said, I turn 39 this month. I want to put myself together and be OK. So. My given name is Natalie. My real name is Anne.
It is a pleasure to meet you, Natalie! I feel like I have known Anne for a while. I like her.
You are going to be OK. You will make it through.
Nice to meet you, Natalie. I’m Melissa. I’m so sorry things are hard now. I hope they get better soon. Though I don’t write about it as eloquently, things are hard here too (unexpectedly pregnant with my 3rd when my second is 9 months old, MIL has stage 4 cancer 600 miles away and husband is her only living child, low time and money for the holidays, and a LOT of trouble getting into the holiday spirit). I’m not trying to have a sad story one up, I just want you to know that I know….I know it’s so hard. I hope things resolve soon.
Wow, that is a lot of trauma to integrate all at once. Be gentle to yourself! You are probably less vulnerable to other people’s opinions than you feel like you are right now. Take care, and good luck with this intense period of personal growth (and mourning).
(((hugs))) to you, Natalie. You are right; this is dreadful. I like to think your MIL understood, though, if you were somewhat less than sparkling over the holiday. Even without your mother being awful, the news about your friend and the cancer is…heartbreaking…and work failure makes me feel ill for you. Of course you’re not okay. Of course you’re not. And it’s so hard not to know what’s coming next. I think about that a lot.
As to the other thing, I think there has to be a way to be self-assured without turning into the person you describe, and I totally know that woman. She is annoying but has a lot of acolytes who enjoy abuse and are too intimidated to ever disagree with her. I struggle with being a people-pleaser. Working with adolescents, I try to cultivate an air of pleasant self-assurance that doesn’t run to bitterness or needless harshness. Bitterness is selfish, and teenagers are so used to being yelled at that they don’t even hear it. But it’s not easy.
What a year. Nice to meet you, but I like Anne pretty well at this point, so I’m not going to worry about it too much. <3
Natalie! I have quietly loved you as Anne for years. Not okay will be okay, and we’re all glad to know you as you figure it out for all of us.
I’ve read you for years, you’ll always be Anne to me :). Sometimes things just have to be really super shitty so that when the good finally (FINALLY!!) shows up, we can recognize it. Sometimes….it takes a long time for the good to come. It will eventually. Until then, it’s okay to not be okay. I think the people who constantly feel like they have to tell themselves/act like its okay when it obviously isn’t…eventually implode. Be you. It makes my day (really) when I see a new post up for here–so you’re my bright spot in my day–thanks for that.
…Natalie.
Lovely. 🙂
(Will email you more babble!)
It is a pleasure to meet you. Again. Some more. 🙂 I enjoy what I know of you, and I enjoy that you have depth and breadth which are all your to do with what you want and need to.
I’m applauding you. For reals. I know this shit is hard, but you’re rocking it. You really are.
Poo-sticks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlATOHGj9EY
picture the german language guy saying “sheisse houzen” really loudly. Repeatedly. I often visualize that when I am feeling down, and it makes me feel better.
…and howdy, Natalie! You kinda remind me of someone…. must be you!
One of the things that makes the holidays so dreadful for me is the sense that all my normal, sad feelings……about how I wish family was closer, about how I wish I had more time to spend with extended family, or that finances were better…those normal blues suddenly become WRONG during this Season Of Cheer. So it all gets impacted. Just as the Sunlight Affective Disorder kicks in. Gah. Right there with you, Chica.
You’re right on time for this interior self-examination, looking at what works in your life and what doesn’t and why. It forms the basis for the mid-life crisis. As one who crossed to the far side of forty recently, I can tell you the overhaul is part of a renewal and of traveling lighter, psychologically speaking, but the road to get there is hard. Lots of bumps, sleepless nights, and very few companions.
I think of this blog as your lifeline to your new self: A way to focus and name a problem by writing it down, taking away a monster’s imagined tentacles by noticing it’s true shape. And then there’s the benefit of feedback by others like me who say, Yes! I know this problem! I went through it too……
Hugs to you. Sometimes the best gift we can give to others is our true selves, even if that self is hurting.
Annalie? Natalanne? Not only, as you write, did you have the healthy instinct to start your blog, but you seem to be taking other steps in your own emotional/cognitive behavioral modification program. It was a big step for me to admit, only recently, after a massive and unjust rejection, how much I DO care what people think about me, but also that I do not like or admire some of them any more than they do me. I did realize some time ago that I am very critical and judgmental of others, but ONLY in my head, and equally hard on myself. I think I always assume that others will react to me the same way. There are certainly mean people out there, but I think most don’t notice or care to be hurtful. That said, when you get kicked, it’s not so easy to “just let it go/get over it.” In general (bad transition here), there is a great difference between being rude or offensive and being assertive, speaking up when you need to, or pushing back. (Have you ever felt like standing up on a crowded bus and screaming obscenities? You never really would, right, but it’s frightening to think about?) I dither ….
I’ve read you for years, starting a thousand and one years ago on livejournal. I don’t blog anymore and don’t comment because I don’t feel like I have much of worth to say.
but I wanted to comment now, if only because my daughter’s given name is Natalie, but she’s young yet, and I am her mother, so God only knows what her real name will be.
I know about constantly hiding parts of your personality. and how sometimes it makes you feel like you will never be “enough”.
do what you need to do to feel right with yourself. one day the not okay really will be okay.
much love from afar.
Part II. I spent my long train commute back from work today thinking what I would post here, but forgot to include the first thing I had thought of! Has anyone read Charlotte Bronte’s Villette? The main character, Lucy, refuses to consider herself worthy of anything, but ends up an independent strong woman. I wanted to mention a nightmare that the character has: “Amidst the horrors of that dream I think the worst lay here. Methought the well-loved dead, who had loved ME well in life, met me elsewhere, alienated….” This is my recurring nightmare over the decades, of my parents, especially my mother, and people I respect telling me that I’m a disappointment and that they don’t like me. I can only figure that this comes from my own resentment over trying to be an admired person or the person I’m not.
My simple brain doesn’t know how to process all this. I’m not such a good thinker. But it’s telling me: Anne sad. Me sad too. Hope we get happy soon.
I’m so sorry. This too, shall pass. In some form or another, it will pass. ~hugs~
Hey gorgeous. Good to meet you. I’m 47 and I’m finally getting around to liking being a grownup, and I do indeed speak my mind. I try to remember not to become THAT woman – basically my rule is: if I’m hesitating because I’m worried the recipient of my words won’t approve of me, I say it. If I’m hesitating because I’m worried it might hurt their feelings – without GOOD REASON (sometimes this is unavoidable) – then I shut up. Except if wine. Sigh. Hxxx
Whoa. Light and love to you sista.
Hi Natalie, it is a pleasure to meet you.
Halle – fucking – lujah!
I am just tonight stumbling back onto your blog. After TCT started happening, and your posting got really sparse, I thought the cool thing might have eaten you and you weren’t going to blog anymore. I thought about looking the blog up tonight and then stumbled onto a link from another blog, and here you are!
I wanted to comment on the post where you came out to your sister, because you said you sent her the first year of your posts, and that they had been removed from here. As I read that, I was all, “THAT’s why I couldn’t find the recipe for speshul sauce, it must have been taken down”. And now I’m wondering if I haven’t just made an ass of myself because that totally wasn’t you. :/
Anyway, I am *super* excited to see you in all of your glory, bogging like a boss. Cheers, Natalie!