What defines you...

I still struggle with the idea of identity.  I heartily wish I still had access to counseling ... well ... healthy counseling.

“Trying is fine. Failing is inevitable. Don’t let it devour you.” Michelle Sagara, Cast in Shadow.

Kaylin defines her life by her failures, one in particular that was not, technically, her failure, although she doesn't see it that way.  Much of the first book touches on failure as much as it touches on shame where Kaylin is concerned.  I like that about the author, having her main character be so very aware of her flaws and struggle against them.  In a way, the entire plot is more of a background to Kaylin's development.  Odd that.

I went 92 days without a meltdown.  That ended at my last GP appointment.  So, count started again (keeping track of dates, both days until and days since, is something I have found particularly helpful of late).  I have gone 8 days without a meltdown.

What I am proud of is that, once the weeping and fear and the overwhelm-ness of it all ended, I was able to be thoughtful about the meltdown.  I took what I have learned thus far from Dr. Brown's research on shame and navigated my way through the meltdown in such a way that I do not see it as a failure ... at least I do not now.

I took Engle Road to my appointment.  I really should avoid Engle Road when I have appointments.  There are trains that cross Engle Road.  Trains that cross Engle Road rather frequently.  Even if Engle Road is the easiest and quickest route over toward the medical locations in that direction, it is not, in truth, the fastest way to arrive.  Yes, I got stuck behind a train.

A long train.
A colossal train.
An 18 minute train.

Of course, maybe part of that was how the traffic was caught by the train and the traffic lights together.  But, in any case, the 15-minutes that I was arriving early to my appointment were actually spent waiting on a train.  So, being the polite person, I called the doctor's office to say I would be a few minutes late.

I was put on hold.
I was told I would lose my appointment if I am late.

No matter that the doctor was running late herself.  No matter that I had a 40 minute appointment.  No matter that I called before my appointment was even to begin.  I was already "late" in their eyes and so my appointment would be forfeit.  And my being late would be hurting other patients.

I was confused.
I became scared.
I started weeping.

I tried to argue the logic of losing my appointment before I even arrived, but my tears and my lingering congestion made my throat tight and "unpleasant" to the person on the phone.  I was told to just "hang up and drive."  I did that.  Drive.  I drove the rest of the way weeping and trembling and worried about losing the appointment.

I actually walked into the building only 3 minutes late.  So, I was able to have my appointment. However, it was not all that great in that I wept the entire way through it.  My new GP was great in that she worked to stay focused on why I was there instead of how I was.  Yet I felt that (and I still do) my weeping and trembling changed how she saw me.

I was weepy, trembly, and off-kilter for the rest of the day.  However, the next day, I sat down to try and figure out what was my trigger.  Why was I afraid?  I realized part of it was my lingering fear of being medically homeless, having experienced what it is like to be fired by a GP.  But the reality of that possibility was not the whole of it.  The words and phrases I heard on the phone, the shaming words and phrases, led me to think that I was a bad patient and was being justly punished because of that.  And then the weeping in front of the GP and badly fumbling her questions about my experience seeing neurologists in Fort Wayne called up every single instance of doctors telling me I am "just fine" and "only anxious" because they were IDIOTS who did not look at me from a physical standpoint ... or know much about the autonomic nervous system.

Gosh, just a month or so after that awful replacement GP told me that all I really needed was a good psychiatrists and a few meds I was having a pacemaker installed because the failure of my autonomic nervous system to help my heart function had reached a tipping point safety wise.  Yes, well, a psychiatrist certainly cannot install a pacemaker!

SIGH.

I realized that I felt that I was a bad patient.
I am not a bad patient.
Thought corrected.

The thing is, I do not feel guilty about melting down.  I think, maybe, at this point I do not even feel ashamed over melting down.  If I had not called, I am 99% sure that I wouldn't have even heard anything about being 3 minutes late.  I certainly wouldn't have heard all the stuff about ruining the doctor's schedule and hurting other patients and being irresponsible and thoughtless and all the things that were used to communicate how the receptionist thought and felt about my being late.  Had I not heard those things, I would not have taken up the chorus I have often heard about being a bad daughter or a bad employee or a bad (fill-in-the-blank).

Yes, I should not have taken Engle Road.  But that was not a heinous act on my part.  I have to work so very hard to think and to plan and to manage and to cope that automatically taking that route is most certainly understandable and even forgivable.

Having labeled my feelings and identified my shame trigger, I was able to transition out of that moment to a place where it was over.  A victory, for sure!

I wish, however, the rest of my life were that way, for I, like Kaylin, do define myself by my failures. Yes, I have had them draped about me by others.  Relentlessly so.  It is hard not to see them, think about them, wear them when they are the chorus in your life.   I honestly do not know how to mute those voices in my head.  How to change the pattern of though riven in my being.

“Success and failure are two edges of the same blade, two sides of the same coin. To fear one is to forever deny the possibility of the other.” Michelle Sagara, Cast in Courtlight.

In the second book, failure remains the primary way Kaylin defines herself, despite being the key to saving Elantra in the first book.  But she is learning there is another way to view life.  Slowly.

Would that it were I could find another way to define myself, too.