Present Over Perfect

stories I told about myself is that my ability to get-it-done is
what kept me around. I wasn’t beautiful. I didn’t have a
special or delicate skill. But I could get stuff done, and it
seemed to me that ability was my entrance into the rooms
into which I wanted to be invited.
I couldn’t imagine a world of unconditional love or
grace, where people simply enter into rooms because the
door is open to everyone. The world that made sense to me
was a world of earning and proving, and I was gutting it out
just like everyone around me, frantically trying to prove my
worth.
Over time, a couple things happened. I wish I could tell
you that when my health suffered, I paid attention, listened
to my body, changed course. I did not. I kept going when I
was sick, when I was pregnant, when I was still bleeding
from a miscarriage. I kept going when I had vertigo—
seasick on dry land—when I couldn’t sleep past 3 a.m.,
when I threw up a couple times a week in stressful
situations.
But what I eventually realized is that the return on
investment was not what I’d imagined, and that the
expectations were only greater and greater. When you
devote yourself to being known as the most responsible
person anyone knows, more and more people call on you to
be that highly responsible person. That’s how it works. So
the armload of things I was carrying became higher and
higher, heavier and heavier, more and more precarious.
At the same time, I was more and more aware that I was