Guilt. It's bullshit.

I don't mean to go all Brene Brown you here, or maybe I do, but I need to talk about some guilt I've been feeling recently, and why it's complete and total bullshit. 

Almost a month ago, I came down with what I thought was a summer sinus infection or a cold and turned out to be bronchitis.  When I finally gave in, saw a doctor, and realized what was happening to me, worse than the body aches and coughing, which were bad, was this supernatural guilt I felt surrounding being out of commission. 

You see, just as the virus started to really stretch its legs in my lungs, I was supposed to be making my way East to be with Chrisena and her family for a proper Southern Bridal Shower.  And now, I was letting a little (a lot) of fatigue and mucus stop me from spending precious time with one of my long-distance BFFs. At least this is the story my guilt was telling me.  Well, I call bullshit on you guilt! Had I gone, I would have felt and looked like shit and completely drawn focus from the point of the weekend. 

As the roller coaster of coughing and fatigue wore on and on, guilt started to creep in about how I was, or wasn't in this case, showing up in my closest relationships.  "OH, you wanted to meet for a drink? How about you watch me cough up mucus instead?" or "Wait, you wanted to do date night out? Wouldn't it be more fun to watch me fall asleep on the couch in the middle of a movie?" 

While I was allowing all of this guilt to bury me alive, not a single person around me showed me anything but patience and understanding.  So I had to ask myself, "Where is all of this coming from? Why are you trapping yourself in a prison of your own making?" 

As girls, we're conditioned to believe that to be loved/appreciated/admired we must be pleasing to others, and all things to all people.  This idea is nothing new to me, I've been trying to shake it off for most of my life.  But never had I experienced it through this specific lens of illness and showing up.

I've been conditioned to believe that part of the reason my best friends chose me is that I have my shit together, I'm a planner, and I show up. Therefore, any failure to do so, no matter how out of my control, would prove I'm not worthy of that love. Bullshit.  It took nearly getting in a car to drive seven hours despite my condition for me to realize it, but it's bullshit all the same. 

In turn, I've also been allowed to believe that rather than being authentic it is my job to be pleasing to my partner, to make sure they have and feel what they need at whatever cost necessary to myself. This coming from someone who prizes vulnerability and authenticity above all else. Well, it's kind of hard to see the irony in that when you can't take a deep breath without dissolving into a fit of coughing. Again, my guilt was built on a foundation of bullshit, on an institutionalized ideal of perfection, rather than reality.  I've had ENOUGH. This guilt is just another way women are being marginalized by norms put in a place to make us feel less than. And it's time we do better. 

So, what's the takeaway from this experience? How can I be kinder to myself next time?  

Guilt is as useless a feeling as Hustle.  It serves only in creating a false perception of your life for those around you, or on social media, not in guiding your actions toward a positive outcome.  But in order to move past it, we need to give ourselves permission to do so.  Permission to choose a different feeling, permission to make mistakes, and permission to let go of expectations and be in the present. 

My intention here is to assure you that it's ok to give yourself that permission. Life is too hard, and throws us too many real curve balls, for us to spend our time torturing ourselves over small potatoes. 

In addition to my core desired feelings, I've been working with two mantra's this year. One of which is, "If I miss the boat, it's not my boat." Throughout this process I had to keep repeating it to myself as a reminder that should anyone put up serious resistance to me, based on a situation completely out of my control, that would tell me something serious, and much deeper was wrong with our relationship and maybe they weren't my people after all. Would this have been simple? No. But clarity and information is power, no matter the form, and I have confidence my boat would show up eventually. It has so far. - xo Sydney