Recently I read Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called It. It was a heart-rending story about his experiences growing up with a very abusive and probably mentally ill mother who decided he was ‘the bad one’ in the family and basically put him on perpetual punishment. Many of the things Dave went through were so much worse than the things that happened to me, yet one thing in common stood out.

After years of conditioning, receiving severe results if he didn’t comply quickly with his mother’s demands, Dave reported that even on the day of his rescue “I now did everything as quickly as I could.” 

From the time I was able to do things, around 5 years old, I was always being told to hurry up. Usually it was to hurry up and find something, or to hurry up because we were fixing to leave…

If I didn’t hurry fast enough, I got yelled at. Once when I was about 9, we were heading home from my school. When we turned on our road, Mama suddenly started yelling, “What are you doing!? Why are you just sitting there!?”

Heart suddenly racing, I wondered how could sitting in the car possibly be wrong? After all, what was I supposed to do in a moving car? 

“I don’t know,” I said, “what should I be doing?”

The answer – apparently – I should be unbuckling my seatbelt , putting all my school books in my lap, and getting ready to jump out of the car the moment we hit the driveway, even though all we had to do was go in the house and we weren’t planning to go anywhere else that day. This is the kind of unreasoned and sudden panic I was thrown into on the daily.

Once Mama started, the yelling might go on for hours. Even worse, it might be accompanied by shrieking and hysterical crying. That happened often and was very unsettling because I felt responsible for having upset my mother, but it was often difficult to determine what I had done to cause such distress.

My dad got it too, often worse than me. And if whatever we were supposed to be looking for in the piles of junk could not be found within a few minutes, we were belittled and made to feel like idiots. I can’t remember many of the exact words, and I’m actually glad for that.

Even after I was grown – and even after my mother was dead, for a long time – I rushed everywhere and did everything, like Dave, as fast as I possibly could. I guess it had just become a conditioned response: rush or something bad is going to happen.

And then at some point the past few years, I guess I realized a couple things: 1) I feel less anxious when I’m not in a rush and 2) there is really no need to rush!

When I apologize to my husband for not having gotten something, the dishes for instance, done fast enough, he laughs at me. “Don’t be silly! It doesn’t matter. We are a team,” he reminds.

As a part of learning to trust myself, helpfully reinforced by my husband, I have learned that I’m reliable enough to meet time deadlines for work or other important things. In other words I will get it done even if I don’t panic, and I will probably get it done better. Getting into a panicked rush only muddles my mind and increases mistakes.

Strangely, the pandemic has helped me grow even more in this area. My days are so wide open, and my schedule now so flexible, that it hardly matters what time I do things! I have to admit I’ve happily surrendered to a more open schedule. Little by little, I’m learning to remove the self-imposed time restrictions and the idea that everything has to be done at lightning speed. I am now more often able to relax and let some things go.

What? Didn’t go to the store and get the items we were out of? It’s okay. Not an emergency. The cabinets aren’t empty, and there’s always tomorrow.

Didn’t make that birthday card to send to that friend? It’s okay. They know you love them. Make it and send late anyway. 

And when I find it hard to accept that I have “fallen short” or am going to be “late” on something,  I’m trying to take a deep breath and say, “Self, I forgive you and it’ll be all right.”

Some days, the strategy works better than others, especially if I have to deal with people who are condescending and/or other perfectionists, or if anyone mentions the missed deadline (even if I was the only one who came up with it), but I would have to say I have come a long way. I’m learning to love the new slower me, and when my Self tries to impose deadlines, I’m learning to laugh it off and mosey on about my business. I’m trying to teach her to do the same.