The Guilt Game

Right around 2005, when I first became ill with what has now progressed to Fibromyalgia, I started playing a game. It was not a good game, nor could I find anyone that wanted to play it with me. It was a game that caused the people I forced to engage, myself included, feeling desperate and awful. Yet I continued to seek it out, almost as a default, and relished in the havoc it wreaked and sorrow it created. It is called The Guilt Game. I felt so darn guilty for being sick and the impact my limitations had on my family and friends. I figured if I beat them to the miserable punch it would somehow lessen the burden my illness had on their lives. Boy was I ever wrong! It only served to spread this depraved misery round and round until the room was so thick with the fog of my guilt even I had to get away.

When my husband and I decided it was time for me to quit regular employment and take a freelance position we graduated to The Guilt Game II. I decided ALL the components that make a household successful were my responsibility. My husband worked excessive amounts of overtime and was perpetually exhausted. He tried to glean bits of fun and relaxation where he could, and I could not in good conscience ask him to go clean the shower on his 1 day off a week! So I struggled through it and adjusted my standards considerably. I was still working a couple of days a week and was greatly affected by the retail-on-your-feet physical aspect of my job. Yet the second he tried to wash a dish or prepare a meal I would freak out, hobbling my throbbing and aching legs into the kitchen to shoo him out and do the work myself. Oh would he get mad at me!

See somewhere along the joining up of our life and my illness I decided domestic work was mine, and paycheck work was his. I don't know if it was my upbringing, my desire to be a good wife or a way to feel less guilty about my illnesses and how incredibly limited I was. I only know it was very important for me to assume all household responsibility. It represented there was still something I could do to contribute to our life, a way to take care of my husband and try and make his life easier. I felt elephant-on-your-chest-guilty for how hard he worked to support us. I also sought out a way to remain relevant, still be needed. I could not just drop out of life all together and fade into the background... This Guilt Game is still something I struggle with daily. I have gotten quite a bit better about it, or at least about expressing it. But my husband just came home from the grocery store after a long day of work and is preparing to cook dinner. The fact that I am a crying sobbing mess about it means I still have a long way to go baby!

Thanks for joining,
Leah

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