Empathlet
Yesterday after Cassie got home from preschool, we were sitting on the couch. I thought I'd been fronting pretty well, being warm and cheerful. At the moment, though, Cassie was playing with something, and I was looking desultorily through a catalog and thinking about work. Cassie looked up and startled me by asking, "Mama, are you feeling worried?"
"Um, yeah, I guess I am," I admitted.
"What are you worried about?"
I explained that it was nothing about home, it was just about work. What about work, she wanted to know. Oh, I said, I'm just taking a long time to learn some of the things I have to learn. That seemed to satisfy her, and she went back to what she was doing.
It's true that it's hanging kind of heavy on me just now. It might be useful in some soul-stretching way to be attempting something I'm not naturally good at, and to be struggling. I mean, this does fall in the not-killing-us-making-us-stronger category, right? I remind myself that I never expected to be good at this. I knew it would be hard for me, and I could only probably hope for adequacy, at least at first. But I still haven't heard back from my bosses about my request for a new preceptor, and it's making me feel particularly vulnerable and squirmy.
I'm also a little confused as to what to feel. I guess my best judgment is that my performance really has not been so bad as Jessica seems to think it has (Jessica unfortunately being the source of most of Linda and Maureen's impressions of how I'm doing as well). But what if I'm just being defensive? What if it really is that bad, and I'm just scrambling to continue to think well of myself? I try to think through individual situations, examples of where things haven't gone quite right, but I just end up all flummoxed and fuming and depressed. I don't know what to think. I don't know whose judgment to trust.
Well. When I was postpartum with Cassie, I felt at least this bad about my decision to be a parent. I felt trapped in a terrible mistake. And it did all work out pretty swimmingly ultimately. So for now I guess I just hang on and do my best and wait it out a while. And, um, definitely keep taking the Prozac.
"Um, yeah, I guess I am," I admitted.
"What are you worried about?"
I explained that it was nothing about home, it was just about work. What about work, she wanted to know. Oh, I said, I'm just taking a long time to learn some of the things I have to learn. That seemed to satisfy her, and she went back to what she was doing.
It's true that it's hanging kind of heavy on me just now. It might be useful in some soul-stretching way to be attempting something I'm not naturally good at, and to be struggling. I mean, this does fall in the not-killing-us-making-us-stronger category, right? I remind myself that I never expected to be good at this. I knew it would be hard for me, and I could only probably hope for adequacy, at least at first. But I still haven't heard back from my bosses about my request for a new preceptor, and it's making me feel particularly vulnerable and squirmy.
I'm also a little confused as to what to feel. I guess my best judgment is that my performance really has not been so bad as Jessica seems to think it has (Jessica unfortunately being the source of most of Linda and Maureen's impressions of how I'm doing as well). But what if I'm just being defensive? What if it really is that bad, and I'm just scrambling to continue to think well of myself? I try to think through individual situations, examples of where things haven't gone quite right, but I just end up all flummoxed and fuming and depressed. I don't know what to think. I don't know whose judgment to trust.
Well. When I was postpartum with Cassie, I felt at least this bad about my decision to be a parent. I felt trapped in a terrible mistake. And it did all work out pretty swimmingly ultimately. So for now I guess I just hang on and do my best and wait it out a while. And, um, definitely keep taking the Prozac.
posted by Rosie Bonner at 10:32 AM
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