Am I happy or just busy?

Rachel Jeffcoat - 20 Feb 16

I had stupid gum surgery last Saturday. Stupid because putting the words ‘gum’ and ‘surgery’ together sounds like you’re trying to be dramatic, but that’s how they worded it and ‘two-hour dentist appointment’ doesn’t cover the half of it.

Stupid because I got a big cupful of sedative beforehand but didn’t fall asleep, so have horrific memories of the sound of a scalpel against the bones in my mouth. Push. Scrape. Scraaaaape. ‘I’m going to put another stitch through here’. Oh gosh, please don’t. ‘You don’t need to hold your breath when I put the needle in’. MAYBE I’LL DECIDE WHAT HELPS AND WHAT DOESN’T. Afterwards I sat in a chair while my husband signed me out, tears and blood dripping onto my jumper. A very lovely trainee nurse fetched me some gauze for the journey home, looking at me with what, in retrospect, I think might have been alarm.

Anyway, here I am, after a week of not being able to eat anything harder than an undercooked crumpet, lying with a dressing gown over my face because it doesn’t help with the toothache but I can pretend it does. I can’t talk, my hair looks like a bird’s nest and I stink. I literally have not been able to do a single thing that I would normally do. The husband’s had a cracking week doing both our jobs in half the time. As you can imagine. And it’s been the best half-term holiday ever for my four-year-old.

I am not often totally incapacitated, but whenever I am it reminds me: I tend to define myself by how much I do.

I have an ideal day in my head where I’ve spent quality time with both my boys, got some exercise, made dinner from scratch, done a reasonable job with my fringe (HAHA NO BUT REALLY), written something life-changing, had a proper conversation with the husband and produced an immaculate house. None of my days actually look like this, so I grade them according to how close they are to the ideal. And then I go one step further, and allow how much I’ve done to decide what sort of person I am.

Acceptable, or not. Good mother, or not. Worthwhile, or not. Getting somewhere, or not.

I’m particularly susceptible to that sort of thing, because small children are beasts and don’t ever give you a monthly performance review. I want to know whether it’s been a good day, so I invent little hurdles of my own. But you run into problems when you can’t hurdle at all. By yesterday afternoon I was about ready to downgrade myself to Most Useless Parasite Of All Time. I can’t be good if I haven’t ticked my tick-boxes. I can’t be good if I’m not good for something. What am I good for? (This is the sort of question you must address to universe at large, preferably on knees, preferably with one hand raised to heavens.)

I wonder if you do this too. This constant recalibration of worthiness, based on the number of ticks on your tick-sheet. Most of us are busy by necessity, so I wonder if we get into the habit of investing it with virtue, too. Busy woman = good woman. And we don’t notice we’re doing it. Until we’re forced to stop absolutely everything, and realise how poor it makes us feel.

This afternoon I decided to step back from the self-flagellation I’d been standing under. For two reasons.

First, I think there is a difference between cramming our day with incident and marking it with things that help us expand. Consciously building relationships, working to keep us happy and comfortable – those are beautiful things, and they’re beautiful because of what they do for me and for us, not because of how much time they take.

An example. Last week I walked back from taking the four-year-old to school. He’d fallen into a slimy puddle on the way there, so I was late and carrying a bundle of his muddy clothes. But the sun was out, everything golden and green and brown. I stopped in a sludgy, pot-holed lane because the birds were singing louder than I’d ever heard them before. Then I realised that a background roar I’d thought was water was actually more birds in more trees, further and further away. All of them singing, full-throated, everywhere. That walk wasn’t worthwhile for the calories I burned, for the fact that I ticked ‘exercise’ off my list before 10am. It was important because…standing in the lane just then felt like being baptised with something that made the whole day right.

Second. I am tired of feeling like my self-worth pivots on how competent I am. Or how impressive. Because I will always have weeks like this one, where even basic competence is out of reach. We are so much more than how much we do. We are intrinsically valuable, even at our lowest. We are enough.

This afternoon I stripped off my stinking pyjamas and stepped into the shower: my crazy hair, my swollen mouth, my broken nails and dry legs. I put all of my sad failing self under the hot water, and washed very carefully with moisturising soap, and thought: easy now, my love. Here you are, and you are worth the washing.

Sometimes, you mark the time not with tick-boxes but with taking care of yourself. Sometimes, you mark the time by being here, and accepting yourself, and remembering that you are enough, and enough, and always enough.

Picture credit: Laura Peng, via Unsplash

Rachel Jeffcoat

Rachel Jeffcoat is an editor, writer and mum to two boys and a squidgy baby girl. She can usually be found hunting for missing Hot Wheels cars, poking things with sticks, eating vast quantities of secret cake, writing after midnight and reading whenever she has a hand free.

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