A plant sits wilting. Laundry peeks over the side of a basket. My husband sighs.
All quiet, but obligation is loud. It is the sound of you should screaming in my head.
The plant, a symbol of good intentions gone wrong.
The laundry, one way I prove that I believe in tomorrow.
My husband, proof I tell myself that I am responsible for interpreting other people’s feelings.
The weight of believing I can interpret what other people are feeling or thinking, and ultimately make a meaningful difference in their experience, can be crippling. I find myself imagining their thoughts, managing scenarios in my head, and creating solutions for problems that may or may not exist. I’m not sure in which point of my life I picked up this belief.
Was it in childhood when adults proved they were unpredictable?
When they made me feel like I had some sort of influence over their emotions or life experiences?
Or was it in my adult life when I realized that if things aren’t carefully managed, they will fall apart?
My plant is definitely falling apart, too much love and then not enough I’m told.
My laundry will get done.
My husband…
My husband has never “should-ed” me. If anything he is encouraging to the point that I feel like if I listen to him I will turn into the world’s laziest person. He tells me my only job is to be happy. I don’t believe him. I believe that if I live each day only doing things that make me happy, he will collapse from the weight of carrying all of the responsibilities somewhere along the way. I believe that he will build resentment and wish he had a more observant and involved partner. So that is what I am. I watch for “signs” he needs help or that things are getting heavy, and I try to rescue. I offer help, take on tasks, and quietly start to hate my day to day all without ever asking what the sigh was about. If I assume my husband’s sigh means there is something I need to fix, I may or may not be right, but one thing it does communicate to him is that I don’t trust him. I don’t trust him to understand his own feelings or to tell me if he needs help.
I have become adept at trying to predict outcomes and other people’s feelings. So much so that I find myself signing up for things I wish I hadn’t, and as much as I hate to admit it, people pleasing. I would never identify as a people pleaser. Not in general anyway. I am not one to try and bend over backwards to help everyone who crosses my path but let me decide I care about someone and it’s game over. I, a self proclaimed selfish person, will start doing things I don’t want to, saying things I don’t mean, and abandoning the person I have fought so hard to cultivate and become.
I do this in the name of love. In the name of helping. Of fixing. I believe I can see things they can’t and I should do everything in my power to mitigate whatever I can.
I believe that in order to be loved, I need to be useful. I need to make them feel the way they want to feel, validate them, create no resistance to their reality. Their ideas are great ideas, their thoughts, groundbreaking. I build people up while I let myself fall. No one has intentionally put me here, it’s just where my obligation story says I belong.
I try hard not to let myself become a burden, or create discomfort. However, my “helping” tends to lead me into building resentment the way my laundry basket collects clothes. It quietly sends the message that I am not important and I wilt like my plant. I sigh.
