Mad at myself

Now that I am over having a minor tantrum about it - the only thing I can really say about my week is that I am really mad at myself. That's the problem with having done inventories and such - you know what your part in things is automatically, without even having to think about it. And wouldn't it be great if I could just blame it on everyone else. It's everyone else's fault that I had a bad week, that my week wasn't what I wanted it to be.

But it wasn't. It was my own fault - for having expectations. For wanting it to be a certain way and to feel a certain way and not feel a certain way. And I completely know that expectations are dangerous. It's such a commonly talked about thing in AA meetings. Expectations breed resentments or are resentments waiting to happen. You are just asking to be disappointed. I have spent enough time on resentments and expectations to recognize immediately what happened here.

I let things get to me this week, more than I should have. I just had this inability to go with the flow of what was happening with my job this week as I was trying to work from outside the office - which was more difficult than I wanted it to be - and the impact work was having on what I wanted to do here. I've never been a go with the flow kind of person. I don't like it when the plan gets changed, I am not naturally flexible or spontaneous. It has taken practice to ever be able to roll with anything. I'm normally fairly good at it now, but it requires certain things to be able to do it. Like perspective for one, which I suffered a fairly significant loss of around Tuesday. And after all, everything does come down to perspective.

So what went wrong exactly? I agreed to work this week. I wasn't on vacation - I didn't want to be on vacation (correction, I felt too guilty to take vacation this week), I was just working from outside the office. I had no reason to believe that this week would be slower for me when the past 4 months have been extremely busy. I wanted it to be, I thought it would be, but I had no real basis for believing that. Why would the partner leave me alone this week when I was working. I said I was going to work this week, I just didn't want to work like this. So, I should have said that. Besides that, I went almost a week without a meeting because of work.

I knew this week would be hard given that yesterday was the anniversary of the day I was diagnosed with breast cancer, tomorrow is my 31st birthday, and today is the dreaded day in between, which used to be known as the dreaded night before my birthday. I knew it would have some effect on me, I just didn't know what the effect would be. I had no idea whether I could avoid the feelings or not or what the emotion would even be. All fear? Sadness? And I didn't know that it would come out sideways - that the fear and the pain around these days would come out in the form of intense anger and extreme resentment.

I should have known that because anger has always been my default emotion. When I was crying about the cat earlier, I'm not sure it was about the cat.

I'm mad at myself because despite what was going on at work - despite the stress of it - it didn't have to ruin my entire week. I know better - I know how to keep this type of thing from happening. Sometimes I'm even really good at keeping this kind of thing from happening. This week was really important to me and I allowed it to b e ruined. And now I get to go home upset with myself for allowing that to happen and sad that my time with my nephew, which is valuable to me, was kind of wrecked by my being angry all week about work. Or angry about something anyway, work or otherwise. Or scared maybe. I really think the problem is fear that I can't figure out how to deal with.

How many more weeks will I have? I can't get this one back. How many more chances will I have to come to Michigan for a week to stay, instead of just the weekend, and to play with my nephew and to be woken up way earlier than I want to be by the sound of my nephew's voice exclaiming "innie in der" when he pushes open my bedroom door? You let moments be ruined and they are moments you can't get back.

All this time I have been waiting to see what my nephew would call me. He'd never tried to say my name, at least I've never heard him. I have a hard name for little kids to say because it starts with an L. Most little kids say the first letter of my name as a Y because the L is just hard for them to say. And maybe because it's more than one syllable - that makes it even harder. Anyway, he called me "innie" the other morning when he came looking for me. "Innie in der!?" He's so cute. He can say "loader" pretty well though - he can get the L sound out so maybe it won't take him long to get my name.

Anyway, I stayed home and watched him tonight while my brother and sister-in-law went out. We played in the bath and sat in the front window for a long time eating bananas and talking about the moon. We played silly games like high five/low five and other goofy things he made up. He learned two new words I think - idea and hidden. Not that he knows what idea means - in fact, I think he might associate it with sticking the little bath basketball hoop on the window. He's getting good at words though. I taught him relax a few days ago when were were playing a game which included stuffing everything in sight down in the cracks between the couch cushions. I taught him the word not the concept - which I obviously barely even understand. We talked about coons and bunnas, we read about 8 books. It was the best time I had all week.

That was what I wanted to do this week - be in the moment, love every second of it, be happy, relax, have perspective, get out from under the fear that has been crushing me. It was a complete and total failure and I'm really mad at myself for it. And the fear, it is still suffocating me.