I was bouncing back and forth between the table and the counter yesterday, working on a metal clay jewelry project (one involving Satan, our still-new Silhouette Curio), and had been for hours. I’d mix clay, roll it out, dry it, run it through Satan, watch Satan mangle it, break the clay down, reconstitute it, and repeat. Hours of this. It was a long day of wanting to smack my head on the desk, more so when you add in the rest of the randomly irritating things that come up as part of a normal day.

Steve, being the sweetheart he is, had been watching (and listening to) all of this for hours, and around dinner time, got up and started working on dinner. He didn’t want me to have to get hangry and have to figure out what we were eating. (It was just the two of us last night.) I thanked him, in that I-love-you-so-much-god-I-am-tapped-out-might-cry kind of way, and he paused on his way to fire up the grill, and said:

“You’ve been working hard; it’s no big deal.”

Without even thinking about it, I responded back, “Nah, I haven’t been working hard.”

He gave me a brief twisted-face-rolled-eyes look.

“Oh, that’s right, you’ve not done any work at ALL.”

Dead pan, completely serious. And it STUNG. Not because I thought he actually meant it. I knew he was calling me on my own bullshit. It stung because he said what I was already saying about myself and I hurt me by saying them in the first place, but I was so used to it, I didn’t even notice anything other than a vague discomfort until he mirrored the words back to me.

Look, I’ve been working independently, trying to get one business or another off the ground, for years now. Not quite a decade, but pretty close. Most of those years it was because the partner I was with refused to spend money on anything but the bare necessities, so if I wanted a hobby (fiber arts, gardening, painting) I had better find a way to come up with the money on my own, outside of my full time job of Mother and Live In Prostitute/Wife. So my hobbies became businesses that needed to break even from the get go. I learned the ropes, and did the best I could do juggle all the balls I was supposed to have in the air, without losing any more of myself. It was hell, and worth the work to me to keep my sanity, but never was anything outside of Mom/Wife ever considered real work by my then-partner. It didn’t matter if it brought in money, it was never taken seriously, and cleaning and kids and HIS work and wants came first. At the time, this made sense – he who pays the bills, gets their way was what I had drilled into me. And it was his money, unless I made it, but I had better not slack off on taking care of what he wanted. (And I did, and there were days of silence and being ignored. A human can only slowly kill themselves for so long.)

And so when Steve fired back about my not even working, ALL of that came back, and that I was still saying it about myself. That I still didn’t feel like my work – in any capacity – was equal in value to what anyone else needed from me. I still hadn’t shaken the neglect and emotional abuse and the… brainwashing of my work and wants and loves are always, always lesser.

I don’t expect to just shake it off overnight; but when it hits you that clearly in the face, it does bring you up a bit short.

This was floating around a bit in my head yesterday earlier anyway, so hearing it then was a double whammy. I had already noticed that discomfort while I was sitting in my computer chair fighting with Satan, that antsy and jittery guilt feeling that will often force me to get up and do something More Appropriate. (What varies, of course. Mine usually ends up being cleaning that I only half finish.) If you’ve been through this kind of abuse too, you probably know that feeling. That walking on egg shells feeling when you’re just waiting for someone to come in and berate you for not doing something else or ask why other things are not done; that anxious guilt.

Not once did Steve do that, mind you. Far from it – he even asked a few times if there was anything he could do to help, and apologized for interrupting. (We have an open conversation going on at all times, so it’s only sorta interrupting when I’m trying to respond to someone talking to me on the phone or via message.)

Despite Steve being his usual wonderful self and years of my own working on healing, that Anxious Guilt feeling was still there yesterday. It fucks with your head, going through that hell of abuse, and sometimes there’s just no shaking it. Being told for years you’re not important, that what you want doesn’t matter, it fucks with your head in some deep ways. I still feel no shortage of guilt for doing ANYTHING for myself – and if it wasn’t for Steve’s insistence that I do the things I love and pamper myself in little ways, I’m not sure I would have been able to find the peace with self-care to be able to do it.

The thing is, self-care after leaving an abusive situation is critical to healing. It’s a very small but infinitely powerful way of rewiring your psyche after that trauma; it tells your subconscious that YOU ARE IMPORTANT TOO.

The thing is, self-care after leaving an abusive situation is critical to healing. It’s a very small but infinitely powerful way of rewiring your psyche after that trauma; it tells your subconscious that YOU ARE IMPORTANT TOO. It’s weird at first to do it, and intensely uncomfortable. But it gets easier, one tiny bit at a time. I still feel like an oil droplet on water when I do it – skittering around, not quite sure what to do with myself. I do it though. I dig in, and put importance on the things that care for me – both my soul and my body. I am slowly, one project and one bubble bath at a time, reinforcing the belief that I want to have: I am important too. I deserve to be cared for.

I am slowly, one project and one bubble bath at a time, reinforcing the belief that I want to have: I am important too. I deserve to be cared for. 

It is slow going, and I still have a painfully hard time some days. Yesterday was one of them. I wanted to burst into tears when Steve fired back “Oh, yeah, you’ve not done any work at all” and called me out. I’m still carrying that Other with me, like poisonous roots of a plant I’ve tried to rip up, and I hate that. (The entrepreneur in me hates it too, because they know that no business gets off the ground without a lot of time, work, support, and being taken seriously.)

As much as it stung having that mirrored back to me, I am glad it was. I don’t want to be the kind of person who is self-depreciating or who needs their worth and work acknowledged before it is valid. It is valid because I did it, because that is what I spent my time doing, because it is my work. Am I receiving critical acclaim and thousands of dollars for doing it? No. But that doesn’t make it any less valid – not to me, and it shouldn’t to someone who loves me.

I know it doesn’t make it any less valuable or important to Steve; now I just have to keep working on my own valuation of it, one day, one project, one bubble bath, at a time.