Releasing Expectation

When my therapist asked me to watch a dot on the screen and think about my inability to sleep the previous night, it felt a little ‘quack’. The first time I saw a therapist who specialized in EMDR, I only lasted one visit, and we didn’t even practice EMDR, just talked about it. I can typically see a gimmick a mile away, and I am skeptical by nature [or perhaps more likely because of my childhood]. And yet, here I was, watching a ball bounce from one side of my screen to the next. “Think about last night, and see what comes up,” Heather told me, and then silenced her microphone on the other end of the tele-health call. I spent the first ten seconds thinking about how difficult it was to think about anything except how hard it was to think while my eyes were trying to chase this blue dot on my screen.  And then, this image flashed across my mind of five-year-old me.  

When Heather paused the bouncing blue dot and it rested on the center of my screen, she asked me what came up.  

When I was five and my older sister was seven, my mom left us at a new babysitter while she worked the graveyard shift at The Golden Spike, a honky-tonk bar in Phoenix, Arizona. While I am sure my mom knew this woman, Tina and I did not. I don’t remember what she fed us for dinner, but I remember that when bedtime came, I was hungry. Tina and I were given blankets and pillows so we could sleep on the couch until Mom arrived around three o’clock in the morning. After the woman turned out the lights, she walked down the hallway to the bedroom her husband was already sleeping in. After I was sure she could not hear me, I told Tina that I was hungry. “Me, too,” she agreed. The woman had packed her husband’s lunch just before bed, so I knew that there was a package of ham in the fridge, the square kind that feels slimy when you touch it.   

Tina and I laid on the couch until we were sure the adults were asleep. Then, we tiptoed across the living room, through the kitchen, to the refrigerator. The refrigerator sat on the right of the kitchen, just next to the hall that led down to the bedrooms. We didn’t want to get caught stealing, so we opened the refrigerator slowly. Very slow. Tina held down the button inside the fridge so the light wouldn’t come on. She was always good at thinking two steps ahead. I reached in and grabbed the plastic package of ham off the top shelf and slid out two slices. I would probably have taken more, but there were only a few slices left. I quietly replaced the package on the shelf, making sure to put it right where I found it, and then we shut the door. Once safely back on the couch, I handed Tina her piece of ham. I ate the ham like a piece of string cheese, peeling off strip after strip, savoring the salty flavor.  

Back at my desk, at forty-four years old, I felt shame rising up in my cheeks as I retold the story. Heather listened and said, “That’s great. Think about that and let’s go again. Let’s see what comes up now.” That’s great? It didn’t feel so great! She pressed play on her end, and that ball started moving from left to right again. I didn’t want to think about this shame from my childhood. I didn’t want to remember the moral dilemma that five-year-old girl faced: steal, or go to bed hungry.  

When she paused the ball this time, she asked what I was feeling. I was still feeling shame, and I also felt sad. Sad for the little girl that didn’t feel safe enough with her caregiver to tell her she was hungry. I also felt embarrassed, and I could hear the echoes of some adult in my life saying, “Tina is a bean pole, but that Tonia sure is chubby.” I didn’t voice this to Heather. Shame was shame, right? Whether I felt the shame because I stole that lunch meat or because I should have been full from the meal this woman had provided me didn’t matter. Except that I knew it did matter.  

We went again, the ball started, then stopped, resting in the middle of the screen. This time, I was back in my living room the previous night. Rather than remembering the night in the first person, it was like I was a visitor, watching myself. I had gotten out of bed around midnight, after lying in bed for about forty-five minutes, unable to fall asleep. Frustrated, I walked down the hall to the couch. I thought about sitting at my desk and working for a few hours, but I was tired and my mind wanted to rest. So, I picked up the book off the side table and read a chapter. Unsettled, I went to the pantry. I grabbed a bag of tortilla chips and returned to the couch. I opened up Catan on my phone and joined an online game. By the end of the game, I had had my fill of chips, and I was tired enough. I felt like I could sleep.  

Replaying the night as though I was watching from above, I understood what had pulled me out of bed in the first place. It wasn’t the weight of work, or the fact that my husband was snoring in the bed next to me. It was hunger in my stomach. Before I ever got out of bed, I felt that pang of hunger, but I tried to silence the voice of the five-year-old in me, telling her she shouldn’t be hungry. Subconsciously, it was hunger that pulled me out of bed. Once I ate, I could sleep. I was probably hungry before I went to bed, but the voices in my head that still shame me for being chubby told me I had eaten dinner and I shouldn’t need more food. And I didn’t realize any of this had happened until I was sitting in my office the next day, with my therapist on the other end of the screen.  

Next, I realized that it wasn’t just the hunger that lured me out of bed. It was the book and the game. It was spending twenty minutes of the day to myself, where no one expected anything from me. My employees were all at home, my clients were sleeping, my phone was silent, and my family was resting just down the hall. I could steal twenty minutes of the day and have them all to myself.  

We ended the session and I sat in silence at my desk for a moment. This was not the first time that I had remembered sneaking that ham out of a stranger’s fridge. That scene has replayed in my head dozens of times, and I have told the story out loud on several occasions. What I didn’t realize was how that night had been affecting me for the past thirty-nine years. I know that it sounds crazy, but I felt like I needed to take a moment to deal with that little girl that was still very much unsettled inside of me. I know it isn’t possible to go back in time and tell little Tonia that one day she will grow up and live in a home where the pantry is so full that she will throw food away because it will go stale. Or that she will spend thirty-nine years overeating to avoid that feeling of hunger that once plagued her little life. But even though I cannot go back in time to tell little Tonia those things, the grown woman sitting in her office after everyone else has clocked out, needs to hear them. She needs to know that she doesn’t have to wait until everyone else goes to bed to sneak a snack, and that she might find freedom to give herself what she needs if she would stop using words like should feel. I need the grown woman sitting in the silence to know that it is ok to care for herself, even when it feels like everyone in the world is expecting something from her. It is ok, to press pause, to take a time out, and to spend twenty minutes doing something that settles her mind, that makes her feel grounded. It is good to listen to your body and to respond with love, giving it what it needs, not what it should or shouldn’t need.  

That night, when I went home, I made a deal with myself. I was going to check email for a half hour, setting a timer so as not to get carried away, then I was going to sit in a hot bath and relax. I was going to give thirty minutes to what others expected of me, and then I was going to give myself what I needed, rejecting the shame that tried to tell me that I should do anything else.  

That night, when I got out of the hot bath, I fell asleep faster than I have in a long time.