I thought I was managing okay, but it turned out I was just going through the motions and didn't even know it. I couldn't think of anything that was wrong. I'm doing okay at my new job - a little overwhelmed sometimes, and I dissociated one day because I didn't sleep and was tired and was trying to comprehend all the new information all at once and remember everybody's names, and it was all so overwhelming. That was a couple of weeks ago, and I don't think I ever did re-connect after that.

I figured out some of the roots behind feeling like I can never be good enough. As a child, I loved music and wanted to be a professional musician. My family tree has considerable talent on both sides, and I wanted to carry on that tradition. But I never measured up to their standards. My parents told me I wasn't any good. Not good enough to get lessons. And not important enough to have opportunities to learn, either. I asked my grandfather to teach me the violin when I was 9 or 10 years old, and he said I was too young. I finally started to learn the violin almost 2 years ago, and I'm very critical of my efforts. It never sounds good enough to play for anyone else besides me. I think I was 8 or 9 when my family got a piano (one that my grandfather re-built). I wanted to have lessons. My mom dug up an old book and showed me enough to figure it out myself, and I tried to work my way through the book, but never got much encouragement. When I practiced, somebody would always complain, and I would give up. When we moved to Spain when I was 11, we didn't take the piano. They got a cheap electric keyboard (a toy), which would only play one note at a time, and I tried to play that. It would play chords by pushing chord buttons, and had its own music that came with it. I was working on it. But sometimes I would forget to change the chords, and my dad would complain, and within a couple of weeks they got rid of the keyboard. I wanted to sign up for orchestra at my school, but my parents said it was a waste because we were about to move to Spain, and there was no point in starting. After we moved, I was not allowed to enroll in band (orchestra wasn't offered), because I hadn't started it at the other school. I made sure to sign up for band the next year (7th grade), and picked the flute to learn because they didn't offer violin. I was a year behind everyone else, and never good enough. In high school, when I tried out for band, my parents had told me I wouldn't make it because I wasn't that good. No surprise, I didn't make it that year. The next year, I did make it through try outs, but it was marching band, and my parents complained that I would ruin a good flute playing it out in the weather and the mud. So I got into flags instead. It was a constant struggle for me to keep my place and be able to perform. I was an alternate one year, and even my senior year someone was always challenging my spot. I never had good coordination - my family has a minor form of muscular dystrophy. Later, my dad said that he was disappointed in me for doing flags instead of staying with the flute. My parents never went to any of the marching band performances or competitions, even my senior year when we were third place at the state marching band competition. They might have gone to one, but left early, before we performed.

I tried to join the church choir, but my mother always volunteered for the nursery, and I generally got told that it was selfish if I didn't go and help her in the nursery. One year I had started singing with the ward choir, and I loved the music that we were doing - it was more challenging and the choir sounded really good. Then I went to a practice, and at the beginning they announced that the choir had decided only to have adults because youth voices didn't blend right with adult voices (I think I was 16, and I was the only youth member regularly singing with the choir). I looked at my dad, who always did choir, for support, and he didn't even notice me as I tried to get out of the room without showing tears.

There were a lot of things that I tried to do, and my parents or my sister always said I was no good and shouldn't try. If I tried anyway, they kept criticizing me until I eventually gave up. You had to be instantly perfect right from the start, or it was no good.

Then, since being a musician was out, when I started making career choices in college I got similar messages. They said that I shouldn't go into psychology because I knew I had some problems. I changed to communicative disorders. The faculty continually emphasized that you can't legitimately do anything in communicative disorders with a bachelor's degree. I didn't question anything since my history taught me not to. Then I was asked to resign from the honor's program. I was lacking in organizational skills, and generally somewhat immature, and I guess I knew that. Then I wasn't admitted to the master's program. They were blunt, and said that I didn't have good enough social skills and they didn't think I should work with children at all. I thought I would apply someplace else, but I didn't get the chance to (was married by that time and he was getting his master's degree and we couldn't re-locate). I couldn't deal with the possibility of more rejection anyway. I gave up on everything, and just went through the motions of trying to be a wife and mom. I hardly even remember much of those years of being numb and mostly checking out emotionally. It was like I wasn't even there.

This mostly isn't really new, I'm just putting it together. It's where I am this week. At least the dissociative fog is clearing out again, for a while.