Why I Bury Myself

"WHAT did you just say?" Jay asked me.

I wilted beneath his gaze. "Um, nothing important." Uh-oh.

"Nice try, but I heard you. I heard what you just said."  

Okay, you heard. So you're asking...why? I buried my head in my hands."It was an accident."

"No, if it was an accident, you wouldn't have said it low under your breath. You did that because you knew you would be in trouble if I heard it."

"That's why you weren't supposed to hear it." Oops. Why do I have to say everything that comes into my head?

He stared at me quizzically. Then, "Why are you burying yourself again?"

How am I supposed to answer that? "Because-" I thought hard.  Nope. Got nothin'. "Because I have to say it! If I don't, it will eat me alive-like a scarab beetle!"

My husband just shook his head. As for me, I wanted to bang my head against the wall. To be here. Again.

***

So Jay seems to think he has pinpointed my major problem, why I keep messing up. He informed me of this, right before he paddled me, for the who-knows-how-many day in a row. He says that I set myself up for failure from the beginning. I focus all my energy on getting through the day without getting in trouble once. But being who I am, sometimes that doesn't happen. Okay, most of the time it doesn't happen. The point is, when I mess up the first time, I give up, sometimes not even knowing I've given up. But it's there. The feeling. That it's over. Day ruined.

So you would think that if I'm in trouble already, I would be as sweet and obedient as possible for the rest of the day, so that 1) he may decide to be more lenient because of good behavior, and 2) to avoid getting in more trouble, right? I agree. I mean, I may not have scored highly on the logic portion of the GRE, but I'm not an idiot! I'm actually pretty intelligent. And it makes sense.

Yeah, tell that to my subconscious! Because I'm an expert gravedigger. Once I've messed up once, things go from bad, to worse, to you-don't-want-to-know horrible. And I don't stop at six feet either. I'm headed for the earth's core sometimes, with how badly I bury myself. And the thing is, I don't do it on purpose! Sometimes, it just seems like a waste to try when I've already failed. I'm mad at myself. Or I just figure I'm going to mess up anyway, so any further effort on my part is futile. And sometimes I'm aware of this. But often I don't even recognize it until later, if ever. It's a change Jay says he sees in me, whether I know it or not. That eagerness to succeed goes away, and a distancing begins. The "fine, I'm just not going to care" attitude surfaces. And he watches in total disbelief, and sometimes amusement) as I sink myself lower and lower.

So his point is that I have the wrong goal. Instead of focusing on getting through the day, and then crashing and burning with the first mess-up, I should focus on every situation as a new beginning, a new chance to do the right thing. Or maybe a chance to redeem myself. And he's right, to a point. I need to change my focus, and I'm working on doing that. But there's another part to all this, that in my opinion, makes things exponentially worse.

I rarely ever immediately get a clean slate when I mess up. Nope, I've got to wait until the end of the day. And in the meantime, I dig, dig, dig. I think a lot of it is that it drives me crazy waiting for a spanking. The anxiety literally eats me alive. I have a hard time focusing on anything, not mentioning keeping from tearing my hair out, and I'm seriously on edge. I want to snap at everyone, including my husband, which, newsflash to myself: isn't really that bright of an idea!

But a lot of times I feel out of control. I HATE it. In fact, sometimes the anxiety takes such a firm hold, the whole meaning behind why I'm getting spanked falls to the wayside, especially as situations add up. So then it feels like I'm getting spanked for nothing, that I have absolutely no deterrent to not end up here again. Which is frustrating, to say the least.

The good thing about it being tallied at the end of the day is that I get away with a lot. I have to say I like that part. If Jay counted up every single thing individually that I do wrong and spanked for each thing, I don't even know if I could handle it. I have a pain tolerance of, um, close to zero. But sometimes I wish he would just spank right after the offense, even if it means I'd get in trouble more! Because then my very hard head could at least equate that offense with an immediate consequence. And I think I'd get in trouble less in the long run. Not to mention being free of that crippling anxiety that comes from waiting. Actually, there are a few times where he's actually taken care of things immediately. And those things stick in my head. I remember them.

Of course, I've tried to explain all this. I've tried to explain the anxiety. I've tried to explain that I have the memory of a goldfish, and need a direct consequence in order for this to most benefit me. But Jay doesn't like being told how to do things. In fact, he has been known to do the exact opposite of what I want just because. "Topping from the bottom" doesn't work in our home, even without him knowing the term. Grrr!!  So I'm dealing.

The first reason, the reason Jay pointed out, as I said, I'm working on changing. It's tough, and I've far from figured out how to succeed at it yet. But the other thing, not going absolutely crazy when I'm in trouble, I honestly have no idea how to solve that one. So if anyone has any helpful ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Either that, or if someone could lend me something stronger than a shovel to dig myself out of this hole...