I Screwed Up

Lily, my daughter, is going through some terrible anxiety right now. She’s naturally high-strung, so anxiety is nothing new, but the last few months have been terrible. She’s having what I can only describe as panic attacks, although they are not really panic attacks in the clinical sense.

It happens at night when the house gets quiet and still, usually after all the other kids are asleep. Everything has been totally fine, we’ve had a great evening, and then all the sudden. . .

BAM!

It starts with a wave of anxiety. She gets upset about something, and then gets upset by the fact that she’s upset. Suddenly there’s a negative feedback loop and it only takes a few minutes before it’s out of control. Panic. Hyperventilating. Tears.

Because I suffer from occasional panic attacks, I can relate. But it still frustrates the hell out of me.

The other night I totally lost it and said some things that I didn’t mean and that I shouldn't have said. The words that I chose don’t matter. What matters is that in a moment where my daughter needed love, comfort, and reassurance I gave her anger and blame.

With tears in her eyes she looked at me and said, “Daddy, do you think I want to feel this way? Do you think I’m doing this on purpose?”

Rarely have I ever felt so small.

I screwed up, big time.

But I’m not writing this for any sort of sympathy. I’m not looking for any words of encouragement, a pity party, or anything like that. I made a mistake, and I’ll own that and keep moving forward.

See here on Facebook we all celebrate the good times - the vacations, the promotions, the new houses, and the new cars. We post about anniversaries, fancy dinner nights, and our kids wining the soccer game or killing it at the ballet recital.

All of that is good stuff, and I love seeing it. But there’s so much it’s easy to loose sight of the fact that we’re seeing highlight reels.

Life, despite its wonder, is not a highlight reel so I wanted to post something from my blooper reel as a reminder to myself, and maybe to you, that nobody is perfect.

We all screw up, big time.