The Myth of Superwoman

I recall a heady day back when I revealed the truth about our living situation, when many of you called me superwoman. I’m here today to remind you that no one is perfect and anyone who looks like they have their shit together is faking it.

Throughout those several months when David was living far, far away from us and I was both queen of the castle and its only lowly chambermaid, my brain fully ceased functioning. Well, no it didn’t, because if that were the case someone would have noticed and my child would have been taken away from me. But, it stopped functioning just enough to give me a fucking complex.

I’d send emails without attachments. File things into the wrong folder and go nuts looking for them. I forgot to update my fantasy football league, ever. I was moving faster than my brain could keep up with.

“Oh, but these are small issues and understandable given the situation,” you might be thinking to yourself. Sure, they are, when looked at on a small scale. But when you’re 1 degree off perfect and you don’t have time to course correct, eventually this happens:

Over time, you get further and further away from where you’re supposed to be. Now imagine that diagram if you’re 5 or 10 or 25 degrees away from perfect and you’ll have a good idea of how off target I was feeling.

I was really, really, really trying to hold it all together. I’d make the train with literal seconds to spare. Even so, I got a few parking tickets. Because in my haste to make the train, I entered the number of the spot I was in yesterday and paid for someone else. Whoops! But at least I got safely to work on time where I could busy myself frantically sending emails without attachments.

Still, I was under the impression that people weren’t totally noticing and if they were, they weren’t completely appalled by my inability to do seemingly simple things. But then it really fucking came down on me.

One day, I went into false labor. I called David to let him know since he was still 6 hours away. I let him know it was way too soon to tell but wanted him to be aware. An hour later he called back to see how things were going. I said, and I quote, “I don’t think this is anything. I’m probably just dehydrated. The best thing is for both of us to get some sleep and discuss it in the morning.”

Naturally, he drove home in the middle of the night in a panic. Perhaps I would have done the same if it were my pregnant wife. But here’s the thing: my in-laws heard the news from David and they spent $800/ticket to come see the baby. They cancelled my father-in-law’s birthday party to do this. They then sent a text to our whole family letting them know the baby’s arrival was imminent.

It was at this point that I really started to question my communication skills. Hadn’t I said “the contractions are irregular and could mean nothing?” I thought I’d said that. But the truth was, at this point, I really had no clue what I’d said to whom anymore.

While I sat and pondered my potentially abominable social skills, an email came in. Feedback from our recent showings. One couple had told their agent they didn’t want to buy our house because it was not clean enough.

I took that information and I formed it into a tiny ball of shame and I shoved it deep, deep down as far as I could and I tried to ignore it. But it kept popping up. I kept picking at the thought that our house was a pig sty. I ran over the list in my head: our house was organized. For every showing, I washed every dish, removed every piece of trash, made every bed.The laundry was done, the garbage taken out, everything in its place.

But we all know I hate to do the floors. If I’m being honest, I’m not a huge fan of dusting either. As a result, rooms I don’t use regularly can get missed when it comes to the dusting. I just literally do not remember. It’s low on my priority list. I began to fret that I was living in squalor and not even aware of it.

David talked to the agent. She said she agreed with the comment and had heard the feedback from a few showings recently. David reluctantly informed me he thought the floors made the house look awful. And I wept. I wept and wept. I cried until I couldn’t breathe. It seemed like the final verification that try as I might, I was doomed to fail at everything. So, I reverted to my old fall back in times of crisis and I wept rivers of self loathing.

If I’m being honest, I scared the crap out of Alex.

I tried so, so hard to get it all done. I kept the house neat and organized (which my family and David had repeatedly congratulated me on while he was gone, so I know this is not delusional). I thought because of this I was keeping up a semblance of order and cleanliness in our lives. But lo, I was 1 or 5 or 20 degrees off perfect and it had gone on long enough that people were starting to talk. I’m sure that happened everywhere: at work, at home, in the blogosphere, in the checkout line at Target.

People knew I was flailing and most of them were polite enough not to say anything. My mom made me dinner and my dad filled my water softener with salt to take the edge off. Boss Lady delegated projects to other people to let me tie up loose ends before leaving. My sister helped me wrap Christmas presents and Liz helped me get organized for maternity, but mostly people were polite enough to not say anything.

Which sounds like a complaint but ultimately I’m grateful for. The truth is, I’m not sure I need to know every time someone thinks I’m failing. I need to live up to my own standards and not someone else’s. The truth is, I don’t mind nor notice slightly dirty floors. As long as I’m not sticking to them, I’m ok. Do I need to clean them better for showings? Yeah, sure, I guess.

But in the rest of my life, I don’t know that I really want feedback on how people see me. I’m hard enough on myself. The moral of the story is one I’ve been telling myself for 6 months now: I could stand to drop a few projects so I can focus better on what I have.

We all have some days when we feel like we suck at everything. When everyone around us is better, smarter and funnier than we are. I have days and weeks and months where I’m convinced that’s true. As much as I’m trying to tie this paragraph off nicely into a happy moral about what I learned, the fact is, I’m still embarassed and ashamed of getting that feedback on the house. I still worry how many other people thought I was failing miserably and never told me. I worry constantly about just how far off perfect I am.

There is no superwoman.

Want to see me keep failing? I’m doing it ridiculously on Facebook – like Taming Insanity today to keep up with my epic failures.