Two Steps Forward and a Giant Leap Backwards

I'm frustrated tonight. Yesterday I finished the work my boss had given me to do at home, so today I spent most of the day at church helping Vickie pull the new children's building together for the open house on Sunday. It was great - I had a blast looking around for 50's style stuff to use in their little diner/cafe area, and I got to run errands and help out with painting.... It felt good to be part of something again, and I felt great when I left the church to come home for awhile before I had to be back there for a women's group gathering tonight.

If you've read any of my other blogs, you probably know some of what happened next.

I got home, got on the couch, and promptly fell asleep watching Oprah. Not a big deal, because I knew I'd wake up and have time to get ready for the church thing. Scott called me at precisely 5:42, though, waking me from a deep sleep. We both found me in that groggy, dazed "where am I?" kind of state of mind, but he - not realizing that I had been asleep - just thought I was in a bad mood and had decided not to go to the church. I snapped at him, I'm sure, because I can be very crabby when I wake up from naps like that, which would give him good reason to think I was in some variety of foul mood. Anyhow, he said he'd see me when he got home, and we hung up. Then, being me, I started beating myself up. "Why did I snap at him? He didn't do anything. Why am I like that?" And on and on and on. I felt awful, convinced myself that I was a bad person and an even worse wife, and - you guessed it - talked myself out of going to the church.

Now, I would have thought of this as a defeat before, but ALL WEEK I've been saying I was going to go tonight. I've been psyching myself up for it, I told my sister that I'd be there if she wanted to come, and I was even looking forward to it. I told myself I was going to consider this a trial for myself - that if I could get myself there on my own, without incident, I would have a great triumph to add to my record. And I really believed I could do it. I really did, and I was excited about the possibility of actually being proud of myself for making a big move forward. Then my mind turned on me, though, and it became impossible again, like it always seems to.

So that kinda sums up the past couple of days for me: two steps forward and a giant leap backwards. I was feeling good about getting work done here for my actual job and for getting out of the house and helping out at church, and then I fell backwards again. The bad thing is that victories make me stronger and psych me up for further accomplishments in this whole mess, and defeats - such as the one I experienced tonight - drag be down and convince me that I'm doomed for nothing more than the agony of defeat in the future. I know that's not logical, but my mind seems to hone in only on the negatives in myself and ignore the good things. I think, truly, that that's a big part of my problem. I told Scott last night that I think I'm actually expecting more from myself than is possible, thinking that what I'm expecting is what other people experience all the time. Does that make sense? Like, I told him I was going to go to the women's group thing even though I knew I'd be nervous, and he said that he gets nervous before the men's group things because he doesn't know who'll be there, etc. So that got me thinking about how I really do expect nothing short of perfection in myself, even though I know that's not possible, and I beat myself up when I fail to reach that impossibly high standard. I don't know. I feel like I need to find a support group: "Hi. My name is Jess, and I'm a perfectionist." Ugh.