Holidays are extremely stressful for me; so much to the point that when October rolls around, the anxiety creeps in and makes a home in my chest until we are safely in the new year.
I have had general issues with anxiety in the past, but after going to therapy for a year, I was able to come off all my anxiety medication. But, this past month has made me feel all the hallmarks of anxiety issues again. Little patience, constant worrying, wanting always to be left alone. In short, the anxiety makes me closer to being the woman who has been the main source of all things negative in my life.
This Thanksgiving wasn't great. But it wasn't for the typical reasons. It was because mounds of examples of my own Failure were laid on my plate immediately before the hardest holiday of the year for me.
Failure #1: The Friday before T-day, I got the news that my estranged brother's baby was born (he was not there, as he had left the woman who was about to have his 2nd child while she was pregnant). The rest of that weekend, I was just destroyed. How could such a terrible person and father have children so easily, while my husband and I -- who would make great parents -- just can't? It doesn't make sense and, worse still, just plain isn't fair and feels like failure.
Failure #2: Because I have an aerospace engineering undergraduate degree, there are a lot of basic business classes I didn't have to take. Now that I want to work on my MBA, I have to take a few of those undergraduate-level classes; for the past year, I've been taking them at a nearby community college, so that when I start at my intended graduate school, I can go straight to the meat of the program.
The problem is, the university that I applied to for Spring admission to their MBA program denied me the DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING. This may not seem like a lot, but it is to me. I have never in my life been rejected from a university before; in fact, until now, every college I applied to gave me a lot of scholarships because they wanted me. To make it worse, I don't think particularly highly of this university that I applied to and my undergraduate university is much more highly ranked than it, but I applied to it because it is 10 minutes from our apartment and the only public school in the area. And then, BAM! sorry, we don't want you.
Failure #3: Work has been tough for me lately. I am not in my comfort zone, and it has me out of sorts. I have been at my job for three years now; almost all of that was spent on one project, and I was on it from very beginning to very end. I knew it in and out, because I designed it, ordered the parts, built it, designed the testing for it, and tested it. I have been completely spoiled by that. Now, I am in a project-limbo, where I am working on small parts of several projects that have been around for 10+ years. I don't understand much about either of them, and I have made mistakes that other people then had to clean up for me. I am used to being the one that always knows what is going on, and knows how to tackle situations. But, now, I spend an uncomfortable proportion of my time at work feeling lost.
Failure #3: Work has been tough for me lately. I am not in my comfort zone, and it has me out of sorts. I have been at my job for three years now; almost all of that was spent on one project, and I was on it from very beginning to very end. I knew it in and out, because I designed it, ordered the parts, built it, designed the testing for it, and tested it. I have been completely spoiled by that. Now, I am in a project-limbo, where I am working on small parts of several projects that have been around for 10+ years. I don't understand much about either of them, and I have made mistakes that other people then had to clean up for me. I am used to being the one that always knows what is going on, and knows how to tackle situations. But, now, I spend an uncomfortable proportion of my time at work feeling lost.
So, naturally, I had a breakdown. I cried for days. When we celebrated Thanksgiving with my family on the Friday after, I was the crazy one. Not my mom. Me. Of course, on this side of it, I realize that these "failures" aren't unexpected, nor are they my fault alone, nor are they compeltely within my control. I have ways to go about addressing each one.
But, man. It sucks. I'm sure a more optimistic person could say that all will work out, that these are learning experiences to grow from, blah blah blah.
But the best I can give right now is that I know things will get better eventually. I know that. We'll have kids somehow. I'll get my MBA somehow. I will figure out my work stuff somehow. I just wish the pain of being imperfect wasn't so acute.
