Run to the water

I wonder if I will ever lose the fear of not being good enough? It's a pervasive fear - one that sucks my breath occasionally, leaving me fighting and drowning in a wave of anxiety. Swamping and painful. While the world continues to spin around me. It's like the tally of all the things I've done wrong in my life sits close to the surface, always being added to (as humans necessarily do) but occasionally I'm tipped into that bucket, cold and icy.

I've been told guilt is a useless emotion, and perhaps it is, but sometimes looking at the decisions I've made in life that have added to my bucket-o-shame I can't help but wonder how I could have done it better. Where I could have stepped in and made a difference to the outcome in a way that didn't leave me feeling wretched. It's the way I learn, and hopefully stay mostly on the side of being a good person.

But today listening to my children screech in the darkness about the unfairness of being sent to bed without a dvd (because they scratched the one that they picked for movie night) while I look at the detritus over the floor, I feel hopeless and trapped in my family situation (when i ought to be feeling blessed), I feel ungrateful and whiny. Panicked and resentful. And I can't help but think that negativity attracts negativity.

That maybe my terrible parenting is a direct result of my terrible behaviour which is a direct result of my terrible selfishness.

So I'm writing and drawing aimlessly tonight. Bloodied edges of my ragged fingernails painful as I tap them on my high feedback keys. Enjoying the flash of pain. And waiting for my brain to settle down again, because this sort of turbulence always passes, but while I'm here, it's hard to remember to keep my belt buckled and to remain calm.