Circled

So, we're in therapy, and I shake my head yes, but I really mean I have no idea what you are talking about. I come home from a 12 hour day and the kitchen is a mess crawling with food and my husband says I think we have roaches and the therapist says you shouldn't be such a clean freak. It makes me want to take a nap.

Ok, I get it- that I should work on myself before others, that I have a sickness, too. Actually, it has a name: generalized anxiety disorder. I know that this is a term therapists give to relatively sane people so that they can charge their insurance for their sessions. I'm not a total idiot (though I could possibly be convinced that I am), but I hold onto this diagnosis like a rare jewel, shining from my cupped palm. Aha! So there's an explanation (besides my apparent allergy to dairy) for why my hands bleed into the dishes and the keyboard, stigmata-like. And the answer is not that I'm a martyr.

They say other people can't make you feel anything. Only you can make yourself feel and you can decide to feel whatever emotion you want. I feel very weak that I do not seem able to accomplish this task. I leave the therapy session and I am more frustrated than when I walked in, because now I feel like I have not only to actually do everything at home, but I also have to pretend that I'm not so that I'm not called a workaholic and so that my mind can be empty. I try it for a few days: don't make my lunch, let the dishes sit in the sink, do not fold the laundry, leave the toys where they fall, walk on floors gritty from my husband's construction projects. It feels fine mentally to not do stuff - I read, I make a household budget (not not doing something I realize, but something I've wanted to do for a long time), tell my husband he has to deal with the bills this month and the math that lends itself to negative numbers. But it feels a lot less okay when I come down in the morning to the assault of things everywhere in the kitchen, a scurry of little legs and antennae across my counters. It feels less okay when the baby's pacifier is covered in grit. When the numbers still don't add up and we have to go into savings ... again.

The therapist says my husband doesn't clean his pile of clothes because he doesn't give a shit. This is fundamentally true. I am not an idiot (though I am beginning to feel like one), but my question is why doens't he give a shit? Doesn't he want to live in a clean house (I do)? Doesn't he want our bills to be paid (I do)? Doesn't he care that it upsets me (I do)? Isn't it selfish to not do something just because you don't care, when the other person obviously cares so much? Isn't it caring to do something for another person because they will like it, to put your own desires on hold long enough to get your socks into the laundry basket? Why is it so wrong to ask for a little help?

I know I'm not thinking about this right, that somehow, I am supposed to do more for myself and less for my family/house/kids/husband and that magically this other stuff will get done, and then I'm supposed to be all zen and blase about it, but I don't get how this comes to pass. It seems like if I just sit there filing my nails, I'll be surrounded. I feel like I'm drowning and I don't know how to get it all done or allow it to not get done. Is that sick?