Keeping score…and losing

I’ve been in some crappy headspace anyhow this week, so when my head wandered off while I was driving yesterday, I didn’t bother fighting it.  When my state of mind is more settled, I prefer to keep my thought processes on a more productive or effective track, but sometimes the effort just isn’t worth it.  Here’s your fair warning that this post is pretty bitter.

I was thinking about keeping score in relationships.

I tend to be relatively laid back, and cannot be bothered figuring out who did extra stuff for whom this week or whatever.  The Scientist was having a tough week recently, so I did his dishes for him.  He was all worried about why I was doing them, and reassuring me that he was going to do them.  I just kinda blinked and replied that I knew he was going to get home late, and I didn’t have anything better to do, so I just took care of it.  It didn’t occur to me to put a mental check mark in some abstract column that I’d done it.  He does stuff for me all the time, so my covering something as simple as KP for him didn’t even hit my radar.

But I asked myself, in a most exasperated tone, why I then have issues letting go of stuff in the past from my family?  This really bothered me, as “pettiness” isn’t usually included in the list of character attributes that are used to describe me.  It isn’t my style.  Now, I could write it off to exhaustion, stress, or any number of outside influences.  But none of them really got to why I feel the way I do.

I mentioned it to the Scientist last night as we were chatting, and he asked what score I couldn’t let go.  I told him that since moving here 14yrs ago, my collective family has had at least 10 major health incidents (surgery, kidney stone, whatever).  In the other column, I have had 7 surgeries.  When my family has had these incidents, I have driven the person home from the hospital or to do errands later, I have done carpool, run errands myself for them, cooked meals, cleaned houses, changed dressings, brought groceries, transported kids places, sat in waiting rooms, done personal care in the hospital itself, kept other family/friends up to date and informed, dragged work home or to the hospital so I didn’t miss deadlines, sent emails, and sure as hell lost count at how much sick/vacation time I have taken to do those things.

Now, I swear by all that’s holy, at the time, this was just what I did.  I didn’t think about it, no tallies were kept, and absolutely no resentment was found.

But the other day, I stopped, and I looked back.  Of those 7 operations that I had, my father took the kids for one single day (the procedure was an emergency), and my sister took me to one post-op appointment.  Even when the procedure was scheduled a few weeks out, and I asked for the help we so desperately needed (such as when kids were unable to stay home alone, needed to get to school, etc), it was either simply refused, or some excuse was carelessly tossed my way.  They “didn’t have time” or were “too busy.”  Afterwards, it was merely an occasion for a phone call asking how it went.  The Scientist was left to his own devices in the emergency cases, and we did have some fantastic friends who helped us out in those times.  There was this huge, huge push for us to “move closer to family” but man, I often wonder why. We did the vast majority of the driving to attend sports stuff, events, whatever.  My parents would be shopping on the weekends, 15-20 minutes from my house, and wouldn’t even call.  Then they’d complain about not seeing the kids.  But this really takes that proverbial cake for me.  It’s perfectly acceptable for me to drop my life to help everyone else, but it’s just as acceptable for them to ignore me and my family?  I’m confused as to how this math works out, and I’m thinking that even my own personal, resident math genius Professor couldn’t explain it.

The Scientist is a proponent of Stephen Covey, and borrowed Covey’s allegory of an emotional bank account to offer an opinion.  Covey asserts that relationships are like a bank account; acts of love are deposits, and hurtful actions or things that break trust are withdrawals.  (That’s a super-simplified explanation, but you get my drift.)  So he said that my family has made so many withdrawals from that account without deposits that it causes resentment to build up where it normally wouldn’t.  In a healthy relationship, deposits are so common and plentiful that even a rare big withdrawal doesn’t have to do too much damage, and little ones are easily fixed or even overlooked.  But the constant taking without giving back, and the fact that I was so clearly not valuable to them, has taken its toll.

There’s a quote that I have loved since I first saw it, and my relationship with my family exemplifies it beautifully:

“Do not make someone a priority if they only make you an option.”

I think I’ve been an option long enough.

OK, so now what do I do?

I really was in a good mood today.  I got the Ambassador’s tuition paid for next year, and it turns out that my blood pressure numbers were really quite attractive.  Dr. A came in and we had a good talk, agreed that the current drug regimen I’m on is working, and we’re so keeping it the same.  He laughed when I said I was the “anti-drug-seeker” because I didn’t want too high of a dose, or too strong a drug.  He agreed, though.  He said I was definitely one patient that he didn’t worry about when it came to that.

So he’s almost out the door, we’re winding up our conversation, which was about working out and such, and I said something about kayaking.  His head snapped up and he said, “Wait, what?  Kayaking?”  I said, “Yeah, it’s my favorite solace/therapy/workout.”  He turned his body into the room, and slowly shook his head, almost like one of those pathetic TV dramas where the doctor has to tell the family that the patient has the rarest form of the rarest condition, and the only cure is a flower that’s only available from the depths of the jungle…Aaaanyhow,  his movements were almost in slow motion.  I backed up a step as he came back into the room, wishing I could hit the rewind button on the last twenty seconds of the conversation.

“That’s a really, really bad idea.  See, when you pull the paddle…” and while I listened and retained his words, and hell, even understood and agreed that his words were accurate, somehow it just felt like a buzzing sound in my head.  Phrases like “pressure on the cervical vertebrae” and “increased inflammation” bounced around and mixed with “risk of extra damage” and “not worth the pain level.”  And with that, I saw my last resource for solitude and mental reset buttons go right out the window.  The only possible occasion would be if there was no wind and no current that day on the lake, or if I was in a sheltered cove.  So the chances of it happening are pretty slim.

I was devastated.  I left the office in tears, my heart heavy and sad.  I was also angry, frustrated, resentful and a myriad of other negative emotions.  The rage consumed me for a little while…I really thought I was done having physical things taken away from me.  Obviously, I was wrong.  Thoughts of my weight loss stalling yet again collided with the idea of losing one of the few “hiding places” I have when crave my solitude.  Things spiraled quite neatly into a depressive mood that may take me a day or so to shake off.

Yes, as in most situations, there’s a lesson to be learned here.  And yes, I will find the lesson and deal with this.  But I’m just not in a place where I’m ready to do either of those things just yet.  Right now, I’m still sad, angry, and bitter.