Self-Preservation or....

being a bitch. Not entirely sure, but I am calling it self-preservation!

Despite my briefly feeling better yesterday, I am a complete and utter mess! This last round of stuff just really threw me for a loop and I find myself falling back into my old ways of setting ridiculously high standards for myself, which I of course cannot meet. I am not sure where these ideas that I have come from, but basically I get this notion of what a "good wife," or "good attorney," or "good person" means, and then everything that I do falls miserably short of that. For example, in my deranged mind, as a good wife, I should happily attend to my husband's ever need, want, and whim while he is sick without being tired or frustrated or whatever. Also, I should be able to go to the gym religiously, have a spotless house, put in extra hours at the office, take care of all of my crazy family members, take care of my husband and dog, and then still manage to devote adequate time to the things I like to do. Of course, this does not happen and because of it, I have been feeling like an incredible failure lately. I hear myself saying "I hate you" to myself over and over, which is obviously not that fun.

I think that I hit bottom today and just basically felt like a big, fat, ugly, horrible, bad, mess of a person. Thankfully I had a therapy appointment and was able to get a good reality check and reminder that I am being incredibly harsh with myself. She also encouraged me to really try to take care of myself...which brings me to the actual purpose of this entry:

My mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and niece are coming to visit from out of town this weekend. I was sort of looking forward to it since my sister-in-law and I have really repaired our relationship, but then all of this stuff hit me, so I am really tired and just not wanting to deal with people. One of Gess's cousins lives locally with his family so we are all supposed to get together. Gess and I decided that because of everything that is going on, we would prefer to keep the visit semi-short (the last thing that we want to do is to feel stuck for hours--especially since they have a tendency to talk about religious stuff and we just don't want to go there right now), so we suggested meeting at a kid-friendly restaurant for dinner (did I mention that the cousin has 2 kids that are not that well-behaved?). In response the cousin suggested an alternative of going to their house, but said that the restaurant idea was okay. So, I said that we wanted to meet at the restaurant and set the time, etc. Then yesterday I get the email saying, "No we will just have you guys over to dinner at our place" and then gave the reason of wanting the SIL to see something at the house, etc. Well, that made me a bit upset and I really didn't want to go and neither does Gess...so (and here is the self-preservation or bitchy part), I responded back today that Gess and I wouldn't be up for that but that we would make sure that the visiting family gets there!

I think that I am still a bit in shock that I did that since I am usually so willing to bend over backwards to make other people comfortable and totally putting everyone else's desires before my own. But, I really think that it would be stressful for us to go, so I think that it is the best thing. So there, family deal with it!