Dear Mom,

When you died, I went into your nightstand and, along with all the books you’d been reading, I took all your journals. All your handwritten notes. I am so like you. Almost every journal is unfinished. A few pages written in and then you’d switch to a different, clean journal, and start again. But there is one you did finish. It was a journal I gifted you titled ‘I’m Going to Die’ and each day it asked for an answer to the prompt, ‘What’s probably killing me today’. I’ve read through it a few times over the years. I read it again this week.

There were two observations I made from your writing that I believe are related to a topic I’ve been obsessing over lately. 

One has to do with your version of optimism. You were in a ton of pain and discomfort during the years of chemo. Terrible stomach problems. Horrific skin irritations. Even a bloody eye. You rarely felt good. Rarely slept well. Rarely had anything to be positive about. Yet, on almost every page of this journal, after you’d describe your daily side effects in great detail, you’d end your writing with, “Otherwise, today was a great day!”.

And then there are plenty of pages when you are hard on yourself. When you beat yourself up for making a mistake. You start the journal off with the story of your visit to LA. The visit when I gifted you with this very journal. You speak of the day we walked through Downtown Los Angeles, and you started getting chest pains. You thought you might be having a heart issue, and we were both frantic and had no clue what to do. I had no car. There were no Ubers back then. We had taken public transportation. I had no idea where to take you. And then you took Tums, and it all went away. Later you realized you’d forgotten to take your Prilosec for three days and it was just really bad heartburn. And what did you do? You beat yourself up for forgetting. “How stupid!” You wrote.

One may read these examples and not see a thread between them, but I do. I see something because I understand it. I understand it because, Mom, I am you in so many ways. And today I am going to talk about some of my characteristics that were very much passed from you to me. Characteristics that drive me crazy.

I’m guessing it’s no secret to anyone who knows me, or reads these letters, that I tend to be hard on myself. This I learned from you. We are a mother daughter duo of self-deprecation. We can see the positive side of a situation but not without focusing a ton of energy on the negative. We can lead with optimism. “It could have been worse.” Or “At least it didn’t kill me.” But somehow, we always circle back to, “But it could have been better.”

You often said that the important thing in life was to focus on the journey and not the destination. It’s truly a beautiful thought. However, let’s not pretend, though you may have been focusing on the journey, that you were content moment to moment. You, like me, were in a constant state of second guessing. Beating yourself up. Having buyer’s remorse. Not quite regretful but never capable to be content with a decision. Less indecisive more unsettled.

Let’s not forget the year of the couches. When we had three different massive couches delivered and setup in our family room only for you to decide it didn’t look as good as you had anticipated. The first couch went back to the store. The second did as well. The third finally stayed. All the while, David and I sat on the floor for weeks while we watched TV.

I think it all goes back to constantly searching for some sense of perfection. For a tiny bit of being right. Feeling good. Making the correct choice. Attempting to avoid regret. And because of that we end up focusing on the failure or the mistake rather than the lesson learned. I think you and I both have thought we are positive people. That mistakes are healthy. We may have both said many times that all is good. That we have no regrets and so much to be thankful for. But our in the moment reactions tell a very different story.

Jeremy and I went to a movie over the weekend. We planned it. Picked the movie. Bought the tickets. Sat down and I immediately said, “We should have picked a different movie.” Jeremy looked at me and said, “Can’t we just enjoy this?”

I don’t think it’s because I am incapable of being happy. I’m not looking at the glass half empty and saying everything is terrible. What I’m really doing is saying that everything could be better. Yes, the movie was great. But… wouldn’t it have been even better if it was a newer movie in a more comfortable theater with more action and laughter instead of the older movie in the older theater that was slower and more serious? 

I find more and more that I am never truly content with any decision because I am constantly wondering if the other choice would have been better. Always searching for a more perfect situation. And what I end up doing is questioning everything. It’s totally exhausting. 

I grew up with you as my mother. Full of insecurities that were very much public knowledge. You didn’t hold back. You weren’t shy. You were entirely vocal about your need to present a certain image. To be a specific size in a body that might have been structurally unattainable. You wanted to impress everyone you met. To leave people talking about your great cooking or your being the best tour guide. You strived for a perfection that was never going to come. Because you made it impossible. The finish line was always moving. No matter how much you achieved, it was never going to be enough.

And you passed this deep need to fulfil some outrageous idea of perfection to me. This inability to be happy. This constant state of questioning. And I am so worried that I am going to pass it onto my own kids. 

As a parent I want my kids to know that life is really just a series of choices. And not all choices are right or wrong. Some simply are. It’s not all good decisions or bad decisions. Most of the time it’s just a decision. 

But if they watch me at the same time openly regretting. Having buyers’ remorse. Wishing things had gone differently. Then how am I really going to get it through to them? How can I help guide them if I am not living by example.

You obsessed over purchases and meals just like I do. Oh, the meals. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve ordered food at a restaurant and immediately wished I had ordered something else? Or how many times I beat myself up for the rest of the day because the meal I chose was in fact terrible? Tasted bad. Made my stomach hurt. Didn’t fill the craving I had when I picked the specific restaurant. Or how about all the times I’ve regretted the choice of a restaurant all together? And if there is a group involved? If my decision effects other people? It is exponentially worse for me. I must drive Jeremy crazy with this shit. It’s nonstop. And I’ll be up at night thinking about this sort of thing.

A conversation that could have gone differently. Food I should have declined. A social media post that no one liked and therefore I probably shouldn’t have posted in the first place. So many purchases. Countless. An entire car was purchased, and I still wish I had chosen a different one. And I share these thoughts with Jeremy because if I don’t, if I keep it all inside, I will go crazy. Absolutely insane. It will consume me entirely. But the kids overhear these conversations and I realize it’s a slippery slope. I learned from your insecurities. They will learn from mine.

I knew about all of your regrets in the moments. And sometimes there was reason for regret. Your botched liposuction that you never got over. The body leftover that you were never happy with. In the moment I used to get annoyed. You made your decision to get lipo from some friend of a friend at discount. That was your choice. And it was a bad one. Get over it. But now I understand. You probably second guessed choosing that surgeon the moment you sent the payment through. And your worries were validated almost instantly. Certainly, during the next few days when you were carried off in an ambulance in the middle of the day wearing not much other than crotchless Spanx. Turns out, you had good reason to second guess. But you never got over it. It sat with you. A literal rock of scar tissue in your abdomen. Never allowing you to move on. Always reminding you that you had poor decision-making skills. 

Guess what? We all have bad decision-making skills at times throughout our lives. Because, at the end of the day, there is no right choice. There is only the choice you make. You order one meal for dinner. That is the choice. Could it have been better? Sure. But maybe not. There is no way to know. Living in a constant state of wondering if it could have been better is totally miserable. I, without a doubt in my mind, hate feeling this way.

I guess it’s not really regret. It’s more of a sense of being in a constant state of dissatisfaction. A perpetual discontentedness. And it’s a brutal way to live. At the end of the day, we can say everything is great all we want. But if we are always in an active cycle of pondering a better option then we can’t truly be happy. I can’t say the majority of my decisions today could have been better, but other than that, the day was wonderful. What space is left for happiness if so much energy is spent on contemplating a superior choice. Of striving for a somewhat delusional idea of perfection.

I do think your inability to be content with a decision goes back to the lack of love in your home growing up. Your constant hunger to receive approval from your parents. Seeking their admiration and acceptance. It makes perfect sense to me. And it’s funny because at first glance I had quite the opposite situation. I had an overabundance of love. You smothered me in it. Never allowing a day to go by without a reminder of the incredible amount of love you had for me. But still, I managed to come out of my adolescence with the feeling that I couldn’t make you happy. That I was a failure. That I was, well, a total mess of a human. So that part of me, that seed you planted by being my mother, it was watered quite a lot in those years. The years when you were disappointed in me. The years when I could do nothing right. Those were the years when my inability to be happy in my choices began to thrive. And now that issue in me has blossomed. It’s at its peak. And I feel the need now to starve it. To dehydrate it. To rip it out of its soil and throw it away. I have this overwhelming desire to not care anymore. I’m so tired of being so caught up in obsessing over trivial things like day-to-day choices. I want to be done with it.   

Maybe this is why I used to drink so much. Why I did drugs. Maybe it was all in an effort to allow myself to be impulsive. To not think through my decisions. And maybe in retrospect that wasn’t the best strategy, but I get it now. I do. I see a positive spin on it. Because as a teenager and young adult, I couldn’t survive all the ups and downs of being that age while also worrying constantly about each outcome of every decision. I couldn’t get consumed by how others reacted to my choices, or I would have been driven insane. So, I self-medicated. It was easier that way.

Now what? I have no crutch in sight. I have no tools to help me hide this part of myself. I have to face it. Head on. 

So… How do I let go? How do I stop caring about better and more. How do I allow myself to be content with my choices? The little and the big ones. I can’t keep doing this to myself. It’s too exhausting. And it’s dangerous because I can’t pass this onto my kids. It’s not fair to them. They deserve better. They deserve to be content in life. To not second guess and question and wonder and regret and be riddled with guilt and dissatisfaction. 

I don’t want them to be stuck in my vicious cycle of analyzing every single choice. 

But first. I must admit, and this is hard to say, that I deserve better. That I deserve to be content. That I don’t need to please and strive for perfection. That my choices are always right because they’re mine. 

Not going to lie, this might be my biggest challenge yet. It’s going to take a while to chip away at this part of me. But I’m ready for it. I’m ready to face it. I’m ready to change. I’m ready to let go.

I love you, Mom.

Love,

Rachel