Lessons of the sunk cost fallacy.

One thing that makes my heart happy is turning off my wifi while I write so they can not interfere in my process of telling the truth. I realize this is a tad on the tin foil hat side of thought, and that really, we are all already on the conveyor belt of whatever this monstrosity called the internet is doing to us. Might as well relax on the ride. My job now is to balance those more aluminum deflected ideas with the ones I know are my real day-to-day life.

One reality of my everyday life are my three children that I brought into this world with no other thought than I needed to love something. I am responsible for them and their well-being. I remember how I felt when I had my first child . My mind couldn’t rest until I knew exactly what he needed. My heart ached that what I was giving was not enough. It still does now. It always will, I assume. I had trouble attuning to him at first. I knew it right away. I had read about it in a book. I felt like I was baby-sitting someone else’s child, but I cared very much about doing a good job for the sake of that little baby. My heart knew he deserved better. In fact, that’s exactly what I said at a special 3-week appointment I made with my obstetric physician- “I feel like he belongs to someone else.”  Before bursting into tears on the paper covered examination table. She patted my shoulder, prescribed some Zoloft, and I was off to the races with my brand-new outlook and infant child. I don’t really blame her, and maybe she recommended I find someone more specialized to talk to. I don’t remember much more of that appointment.  

And you know what? I did a f*cking fantastic job raising my kid. I hurt him a lot, too. I should have thought more about him on his way into the world, but I’m really glad he’s here just as he is. Hindsight can be gut wrenching, but reality is kinder. I wish I had someone to talk to back then. I tried talking to my mother. She came over and asked me a few questions. I remember feeling like she was disappointed I wasn’t worse off.

I just watched my neighbor interact with a woman delivering something. A few bags of groceries. She’s recovering from breast cancer, my neighbor, not the delivery person. Although they may be, too. We’re all recovering from something. We’re all recovering from something. Sorry about that, but it bears repeating. I followed along with their conversation in my mind. The awkwardness of the driver having to submit a photo of the bags by the door, my neighbor’s hands covered in gardening dirt. What is it about people-watching?

My mother used to take me out to people-watch. She said we liked it. The truth is I didn’t mind. The trouble wasn’t watching the people so much as it was what she said about them. The stories she told me. She wasn’t a fan of humanity, and she felt badly about herself. My mother was a mean girl and I was her constant friend. When we watched people she would let me in on all the secret ways other people were stupid or awful. I chimed in when I was old enough. And if I can toot my own horn for a second, my insults had a well-developed backstory. I always believed myself to be a little better than my mother that way, her denigration was always so pat.

All her friends were the same way. They’d turn on each other as soon as they were out of earshot. I wonder now why they all remain friends, but I’ve learned not to ask questions like that. It was not until recently that I realized learning about human interaction through a group like theirs was f*cking confusing. Maybe that’s why I don’t trust anyone ever means what they say? Some people do mean what they say, though. For better or worse. I’m learning that too, but the old rut is deep. The result has been a lot of shallow relationships, never letting anyone know me well-enough to judge. Never doing anything that goes against the grain. For most of my life, I have lived in fear of any decision. I never want to make a call or the declaration. I became so afraid to make even the slightest inclination of preference (that was not exactly the same as my mother’s is at the root of that behavior) that I hid the preference even from myself so that I wouldn’t accidentally give myself away. Anything you say can and will be used against you. Of course, this task is impossible. There is no perfect way to live. Every action you take reveals something of yourself.

This is the time of year my partner calls “azaleafest.” I decided to come out to write in the treehouse he built for our children. And as a by-product, me. I probably use it the most. I almost went down to my basement office to type these words to you. There’s a nice window there, but I can’t feel the breeze underground. It’s important to do things for yourself just because you like to. No one taught me that growing up. I always had cause. I did things because “I should” do them, and I was out to please everyone doing every single should I could. No one could say a bad word about me. Spoiler alert: no one cared. They were all dealing with their own should.

I brought myself up here this morning because I know I feel good when I am in the treehouse. I haven’t been up here in a while, though. I forgot exactly why I loved it. It does feel good up here. The air is finally warm after an unusually cold spring, and the azaleas are living up to the hype. The big maple is shading me from the midday sun, but the flowers across the lawn are brightly lit, vivid pinks and purples. I will never take mild weather for granted again. The buzzing things are active–bees, wasps, lawnmowers. And there is the blissful echo of gunshots for sport in the distance. I could do without that one, but I’m grateful for the reminder that evil exists.

Its an empty way to live; living only to pass the judgement of others. When there’s no intrinsic sense of reason for acting, you use what you infer from others’ observable behavior and make your best guess at what’s going to be acceptable. It’s a whole lot more efficient to look inwardly. Of course, that ability doesn’t come easily if you’ve never used it. The first challenge to using your own intuition is trusting you have it at all, and the second is trusting the guidance you receive is correct. If my life were a map, the “you are here” sticker would be pulling up to that spot. Learning to trust my gut.