Lately, it's been feeling like I've got a bit of a hard-knock life. I'm currently taking a breather after a client who felt our services weren't helpful directed her anger at me and almost made me cry. I'm glad I don't have another client right away, so I can collect myself and prepare myself for the next emotional upheaval. Being a psychologist is the most rewarding job I could have possibly chosen for myself, and at the same time it can be remarkably draining.
Perhaps my work would feel slightly less draining if my home life was really my down-time, but it's not. My daughter was sick for the fourth time this month yesterday, and I had to miss work yet again. The past couple of weeks, I've been working especially long hours trying to make up for some lost time missed because my daughter has been sick so often, and also trying to write a paper for my dissertation. I've given up biking and delayed our usual dinnertime and even ended up getting take-out more often than I care to admit, all in an effort to satisfy all the different things that demand my time.
How has that been working out for me so far, you ask? Well, not so well actually . . . I'm exhausted all the time, I have very little patience with my daughter (who, by the way, is entering the terrible twos with f-ing gusto), I'm eating terribly, I'm getting absolutely no exercise, and I'm pretty sure I've gained weight even despite having had the stomach flu earlier in the month. In an effort to do something nice for myself, I bought myself a little bouquet of white carnations to brighten up my living room. Within a few hours the cats had torn the flowers into pieces all over the floor with the crystal vase tipped over and the plant food solution all over my fancy "grown-up" table and the old hardwood floor. I just sighed at the mess, wondered why I even bother with anything, then cleaned it up.
The biggest sign to me that things aren't going well is that the first thing that pops into my head whenever something goes wrong is, "I hate my life!" My daughter throws her milk on the floor and it explodes everywhere: "I hate my life!" The cats knock over my water cup: "I hate my life!" My daughter wakes up before the alarm goes off: "I hate my life!" I run out of paper towels: "I hate my life!"
Really, Johnson, things could be SO much worse. A friend of mine recently had a difficult medical procedure. A family member is recovering from cancer. An acquaintance once told me about her life as a single teen parent with infant twins. And that's even local stuff! I should be grateful I live in a country where I'm a woman who can vote and work and have a baby on my own! I should be grateful I've never experienced the horrors of war, political unrest, or natural disasters. I'm healthy and successful (sorta), I have a beautiful, intelligent, healthy child, I have a family who loves me unconditionally. Of course I have bad days, and perhaps right now it's feeling like there are more bad days than good, but as my mom always tells me: "this too shall pass".
Indeed, it shall.
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