I woke in the hours before dawn with a familiar dread. The kind of angst that saves its nastiness for when I’m half-asleep and most vulnerable to self-derision. But this time I really listened to those thoughts, brought them out from their dark hiding places and placed them front and centre in my brain.
Kevin was going to be away on my actual birthday so we had gone for a pre-birthday dinner; a fabulous seafood starter with a glass of rose, perfectly seared duck with a pairing of merlot, and a final tawny port with the dark chocolate ganache.
We held hands in the taxi home. We talked about the impossibility of getting older, of how time had flown by and how lucky we were to have found each other.
In other words, it was a lovely evening.
So why would I flash awake with angst over having somehow got it wrong?
I asked myself more questions. I pretended I was counselling a friend as I listened to the feelings beneath the sentences of, “Health guidelines say I should drink less,” or “We spent too much money,” and on and on it went as I examined each thought and detail of the evening until finally I could hear what was underneath those words, “I don’t deserve to be happy.”
Seriously?!?
I’m fifty-freaking-four years old and those stupid old twin towers of shame and guilt are still banging the old ‘I’m unworthy’ drum?
Exposed to the light of logic, I could see how stupid it was. I would never let anyone I know entertain those kinds of thoughts…so why was I letting them swirl around in my head and invade my body?
I felt very clever for having solved the mystery. I thanked my insomnia for helping me blast that night-induced angst into a thousand smithereens.
And then I got busy: I kicked some serious guilt butt. I slapped shame in the face and demanded it take a big hike. Like creepy little werewolves, I watched those ugly twisted twins of guilt and shame scurry away into the dark, probably off to try to invade some other half-asleep mind.
Then I rested one hand on my heart and the other on my belly while I took deep breaths of happy, enjoyable thoughts.
I slept with a smile on my face and the light of love in my heart.
I’m taking any happy I can get.
Because you know what? I am SO worthy.
Happy Birthday to me!
Happy Birthday Colleen – and no feeling of guilt. You deserve every happiness.
Thanks Catherine. I’m so much better at believing this wish for everyone else…guilt be gone!
I was 16 when you were born and still remember you were such a little cutie. You turned out just great and deserve all the happiness you can cram into your head … so proud to tell my friends about you. Just carry on being you and have many more happy BDays!
Martha, thank you for this.
I’m definitely choosing happy, the angst is just too boring. Besides, it’s so last year. To embolden me on my journey to happiness, I have just finished a big whack of Green & Black’s chocolate with sea salt, to be followed by a mug of Bengal Spice tea while re-reading All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews. Let the cramming begin!
Good on u ! Am well acquainted with that “u don’t deserve it” bs. It is a natural by-product of a staunch Mennonite upbringing.
So glad to hear it isn’t just me Ruby.
There were so many good things about our upbringing but the ‘u don’t deserve it’ theme is/was truly BS.
But hey! Never too late to change the recording 🙂
So true! We keep working on it; but add a Lutheran into the mix! That is a double whammy.
This really is a breathtaking piece, Colleen. I’m actually sitting here with eyes smarting (great phrase, no?), thinking how incredibly clear you have been over the last couple of months, how sure your voice, those dazzling sentences. Maybe it’s because I read this piece in my email box instead of here with all the pretty distractions, I don’t know, but it just reads so spare and true and full of my own incarnated anti-heroes. You are shining up something nice at 54, and I’m coming up right after you.
Dear Smarting Eyes aka Laurie, I am so glad to hear your response as I find it mostly impossible to judge what I’ve written.
Hearing that it resonates with you makes the writing of it worthwhile. I’m happy that I’m ‘shining up something nice’, I’m working hard at clearing the proverbial decks and trying to burn off the extraneous. I’d rather flame out than fizzle 🙂
Happy birthday Colleen – what a great gift your brain gave you!
Me and my brain thank you Amanda 🙂
Aside from these existential lapses, I highly recommend getting older.
Stuff that used to be such a big deal is rapidly losing its power. Gotta love that.
Colleen…you put the happy back in birthday! YOU deserve all the happiness you can get…and, with that fabulous Kevin man of yours…and your deep appreciation of all things…your friends and family…YOU are getting what you richly deserve…HAPPINESS 🙂 Yay! Sending you love…xodd
Thanks Dee Dot. I’m grabbing Happy by the throat and shaking her until she cries uncle (or something like that…).
Thank you for the fine wishes for happiness. I’m sending it right back at you. XO
You are SO worthy! And you’re right, you would be the first one to scold a friend for having such thoughts! I’m glad you found peace with those thoughts–and I hope you had a fabulous birthday. You deserve it!
Thanks Gwen. Isn’t it so true that I would give ANYone else a serious smack if they talked this kind of negative waddle, and yet, my nasty little mind has no trouble trash-talking me?
I am done with it, I say. Done, like dinner! I’m too old for this nastiness.
On a more demure note, thank you for sending me lovely birthday wishes. I accept them 🙂
Damn rights its Happy Birthday! My prescription – over and above what you have already done which is brilliant – would be to read All my Puny Sorrows. You will laugh so hard over descriptions of all your inherited Mennonite shit, you might even wet yourself. Then again, maybe you won’t. After all, you’re not that old, nor that young.
Oh dear darling Sharona, Amen on All My Puny Sorrows. Miriam Toews is my Mennonite hero (except of course, if she accepted that designation, that would bestow upon her the Sin of Pride and that would send her straight to H-E-double-hockey-sticks, so I’d best not make that proclamation).
But still, I loved that book and all the angst and anxiety and questions it brought up and did and didn’t answer. I am happy to report that I did not wet myself. I still have a modicum of control, not much, but some.
Based on your prescription, I believe I’ll launch right in and read it again. I was reading it in while Dad was dying, so perhaps I might have a less-fuddled brain this time…or not.