The Kind of Guilt That Breaks You
I fucked up this morning.
Every day when I drop off my girls at daycare, my almost-4-year-old waits in the window to wave to me and blow kisses. Today was no different.
Except that when I got outside today, it was raining. So I was fiddling with my hood. I said “good morning” to another parent. My phone started ringing in my pocket.
And in that moment of distraction, I answered the phone and walked away without waving good-bye.
I didn’t even realize it until I was home just now, making my morning smoothie. And yeah, then suddenly it hit me smack in the freaking chest.
I forgot to wave good-bye.
*Cue the tears *
Normally I might have been able to shake something like that off – parents are humans, we make mistakes, blah blah – but just yesterday I went to get groceries and she was hysterically adamant that I give her a hug and a kiss before I go, and she cried as I drove off waving while Daddy held her back.
So with that image already newly festering in my head, the fact that I had left this morning without waving in the window made me feel almost nauseous.
I am completely shattered with guilt.
All I can do is imagine her sitting in the window at daycare, crying out for me and waiting for me to come back and wave good-bye.
I’m torturing myself with thoughts of “what if something happened to me or her today and that was the last correspondence we had… me just walking away?”
Probably not super healthy thoughts. But it is what is right now. The guilt is palpable.
The Guilt That Doesn’t Deserve You
So here I am trying to get through my morning, doing some laundry, trying not to feel like the worst mom in the world… when a little bit of insight seeps in through the guilt fog.
The guilt I’ve had in the past for not folding a basket of laundry. Or for telling my colleague that I would answer their email the following day. Or taking a nap on the couch after a long night up with the kids instead of doing something productive.
This guilt – the crush I’m feeling now – is guilt I’m supposed to have. This guilt is deserved. This guilt is a sign that I fucked up and need to be sure to make it right again.
You know what kind of guilt doesn’t even come close to this? Like… not even on the same guilt planet?
The guilt I’ve felt for all of that stuff in the past?
Stupid. Meaningless. Completely undeserved waste of mental energy.
That guilt was what I felt because I had been so busy performing a role – trying to be perfect and do everything “right” and (in my mind, anyway) failing.
That’s the guilt that lives in “the gap” – the space between who you really are and who the world told you to be. The guilt that keeps you chasing an impossible version of “good.”
It wasn’t something that hit at the core of what I truly believe in or who I am.
This… this is something else entirely.
This guilt hurts.
This guilt is a reminder of what’s truly important for me in this life and what is total bullshit.
Remembering What Actually Matters
And maybe that’s something we all need to remember – that not all guilt is bad. Some of it points us back to what matters most. The rest is just noise.
So as shitty as I feel, I’m going to accept the lesson in all of it.
The goal of feeling alive and living in truth and all of that stuff that I tout isn’t to never feel bad ever. It’s to know when feeling bad is a sign that what’s truly important to you has been shaken.
The rest – the laundry guilt, the email guilt, the not-enough guilt – those belong to the world’s version of you, not the real one.
That other guilt? Doesn’t even deserve the name “guilt” by comparison. It’s a tiny guilt flea on the giant guilt monster’s back.
I know this true, epic-level guilt feeling I’m having right now will be fleeting. I’ll apologize to my daughter. We’ll talk it through. She’ll probably get an ice cream out of the ordeal.
I’m sure all will be right again.
As much as it sucks and I feel like a terrible person, I know that feeling this guilt is a sign that I have something pretty damn important in my life to protect and to hold dear.
And I think that’s the reminder we all need most: that the goal isn’t to just stop feeling bad, but to get to a place where the bad feelings we do have reflect what truly matters to us.
That’s how you know you’ve closed the gap – when the only things that break your heart are the ones that actually deserve to.
XO – Bailee
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