Re-learning Forgiveness

When you're busy, everything feels like a miniature crisis. Didn't turn in an assignment on time? Horror! Didn't send that email to the right person? Madness! Every moment is part of an efficient machine and any small deviation feels disruptive. But you always know that those things are the small ones, the ones that can be fixed. This week, the crises I faced were not those small inner demons of inefficiency or time crunch - they were deeper and more fundamental.

"Emotions don't follow rational logic," my friend told me last week. She was comforting me after the latest email chain came in, when my anger and frustration had come to a head and I needed someone to rage with and not just text. Having lost two people who were close to me in the last year, I felt I was letting them down. I wasn't being strong enough. Another person might not feel so affected by the words of others. I was wasting my tears. But even though I resisted, I knew my friend was right. Emotions don't follow a rational logic. Neither do people in crisis.

I've been trying to be gentle with myself, to forgive my own personal failings or that I can't be all things to all people. But in some ways, that's the easy part - I can feel wronged all I want, but that is only useful for so long. Emotions may not need to follow rational  logic, but actions should. Send that email. Make that meeting. Ignore the tug towards staying bitter that feels satisfying but immature. At the end of the day, the work is the most important part and that's what must be the focus when others have acted poorly to you. I am very good at holding on to negative feelings, but perhaps now is the time to un-learn that instinct.

The Locked Room & Beating Perfect

Last week, I found myself in a locked room. I had no key to get out, so I knocked - lightly at first, but then more insistently - hoping someone could come to my aid. No reply. I proceeded to become more and more frustrated and sincerely thought about throwing myself against the door, screaming, doing something extreme.

This, my friends, is the locked room of my mind.

For the last few weeks, I've been pacing around in it, measuring the length and width with my steps. I was experiencing the ultimate academic burnout. Emotionally, I was flat-lining and felt guilt over my lack of motivation. Physically, I was trying to rebuild a self-care routine out of sand. I felt trapped by my inability to be Superwoman, instead constantly dwelling on the mighty to-do list that usually governs and stabilizes my life.

But, for all that effort, the door would not budge. I was forced to sit with the uncomfortable tension of not getting everything done and not feeling up to doing even a little bit of it.

At some point, I made a grand realization: no one cared about my work as much as I did. Not to say that no one cared about me and my accomplishments, but no one cared about me finishing everything I'd set out to do just when I set out to do it. I'll expand on this point:

I missed many events, classes, and opportunities to study or socialize throughout the last weeks. And I felt madly, passionately guilty. But, at some point, the tension began to lift. And it was all because I realized that people will forgive you for not being perfect. In fact, no one expects it of you in the first place. We all have our moments of doubt and instability, so it may even be less effective to fight through them than to ride them out.

No one was giving me a harder time than myself. So I made a decision - I could sit in that little room in my mind and kick at the walls, or I could use that space to chill out and let myself come back to center. I'm sure you can guess which one I've gone with.

This week, I am slowly coming back into the world outside, not mustering through, but giving myself some room to feel comfortable again out here. Patience is the key.