I come from a family of guilt, not to say we’re murderers or there’s something terrible that was done in the past and we have to pay the price for it. We’re just people that need to feel guilty, we’re not doing enough, we don’t have enough time for everything that needs to get done, we don’t have enough money to help all of the poor people in the world etc. It’s not a totally bad thing – it’s driven all of us to do more and try to achieve more in our lives than the generations before us so that our children will have better – which of course we feel guilty for but, then you have days that you just don’t know what to do with yourself you’re so torn between what you really want to do and what you really need to do.
My mother is lovingly known as the “Martyr” in our family. Yes I did inherit her guilty feelings and sometimes although not often even do it better than her. In a recent conversation she was telling me how horrible she felt because one of her friends had had something terrible happen to them and she hadn’t been there to help her out. Of course she doesn’t mention in this story that the friend didn’t tell her about it until way after the fact and there wasn’t much she could have done anyway. I mention this because I have found recently that she will at times pass the guilt along, suddenly I’m starting to feel bad that she feels so horrible and I should have done something about it to help her help her friend out. I know it’s a vicious circle. I’ve noticed also that maybe I’ve gotten lucky and my oldest may not have been given the guilt gene – her sister definitely has poor thing is always trying to make up for something she didn’t do or had no control over. The oldest though can’t be bothered, she does what she wants when she wants and doesn’t worry about it one bit, I’m very envious.
With that background I give you the “Gumby Dilemma” – you get stretched so far by guilt or habit or responsibility that you don’t know which side is up or what you were doing anything for in the first place. I found myself there this morning. I’ve been working hard to take care of my mother since my father passed away, I do it out of love always it’s just sometimes harder than others to feel gracious about it, add to it the children going back to school and all the things that need to be taken care of for that, walk through, school shopping, sports meetings, PTA meetings, forms, needing to take a second mortgage out for everything etc. Then add in my husband being out of work for a little while again – I swear he’s not “one of those guys”, he’s always the last one to get laid off of whatever construction job he’s on but I really wish we could find a company that would realize it’s cheaper to keep him than hire a few new guys to break in once everything’s said and done. Finally add in my insane idea to get farther back into the workforce and move my job 20 miles farther down the road, and attempt to train for something new. The final straw came this morning when I got a phone call from my biological father, he didn’t have anything terrible to tell me, just wanted to talk, and he was feeling a little lonely and wanted to hear a friendly voice. After a rather nice conversation with him I hung up and cried….Yes I felt guiltily because I hadn’t spoke to him in a while and he might feel bad about it. Then later at lunch I was attempting to shop for my mothers birthday lunch but was bombarded with phone calls about work and other such things. Half the time I couldn’t tell you what day of the week it is, I wake up in the middle of the night and worry that I might have a face to face meeting earlier than I think the next day. And then I feel bad because I can’t even get myself off the couch in the evening to help my daughter wither homework. I think today if you could see my arms and legs they might stretch around my office building twice in each direction.
They tell us women we can have it all, a career, children a husband and a nice home. What they neglect to tell us is the guilt will drive us insane and at the end of the day, all of our pants are either Capri’s or short shorts, all of our sweaters are short sleeved or tank tops and that multitasking lifestyle that seems so popular is just a fancy name for being Gumby!
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