The Survivalist and the Princess

Apparently I’m a Princess. Now What?

One of the highlights of my week was discovering that my partner thinks we need another therapy session because apparently our disagreement isn’t fully resolved.

I stared at my phone wondering if he’d suffered a recent head injury.

Resolved?

It is resolved.

I am right.

He is wrong.

What exactly is left to discuss?

Now before the therapist sends me homework again, let me acknowledge that I understand, intellectually, that most arguments are not 100% one person’s fault.  

I know this.

I’ve read the books.

I’ve sat through the therapy sessions.

I’ve nodded appropriately.

But not this time.

This particular argument has become my emotional support argument and I am absolutely refusing to let it go.

This is the hill I’ve chosen.

I will die here.

And if the therapist disagrees with me, well, that’s a completely separate issue that we can address at our next paid session.

After all, I pay you.

I’m right.

I pay you.

You’re wrong.

I pay you.

See? Simple.

The real problem is that I am genuinely terrified she’s going to tell me I’m wrong.

Not because I think I am.

Let’s not get ridiculous.

I’m terrified she’s going to suggest I am.

And apparently those are two very different things.

But somewhere between arguing with my partner and preparing for another round of therapy homework, I found myself still trying to wrap my head around something we talked about in last week’s blog.

Apparently, I’m a princess.

I’m still not entirely sure what to do with that information.

The concept remains highly suspicious.

Now I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but life forgot to tell me I was a princess.

I was a single mother with four children.

I was the one making lunches.

Paying bills.

Working jobs.

Driving kids.

Cleaning houses.

Wiping noses.

Fighting battles.

Putting out fires.

Making miracles happen with money that didn’t exist.

There were years when I was lucky if I washed my hair before someone needed something else from me.

Another lunch.

Another permission slip.

Another school event.

Another emergency.

Another bill.

Another crisis.

And somehow I made it work.

Not gracefully.

Not perfectly.

But I did it.

My children survived.

I survived.

Barely some years, but survived nonetheless.

I don’t regret my children.

Not for a second.

I regret some of the circumstances.

I regret carrying so much of the weight.

I regret spending years believing that strength meant doing everything myself.

Because somewhere along the way, I became very good at surviving.

What I never learned was how to receive.

Now I have a partner who keeps telling me that he gets joy from my joy.

That meeting my needs makes him happy.

That if I want to go to the mountains, he’ll drive.

If I want ice cream, he’ll find it.

If I want to put my feet in the ocean, he’ll figure out how to get me there.

And instead of feeling relieved, sometimes I feel uncomfortable.

Deeply uncomfortable.

Like wearing clothes lined with tiny needles uncomfortable.

Because when you’ve spent decades being responsible for everyone else, being taken care of feels foreign.

How do you tell someone what you need when you’ve spent most of your life making sure everyone else’s needs were met?

How do you trust someone to carry part of the load when you’ve carried it alone for so long?

How do you stop worrying?

Because even now, planning a trip with my grandson, I’m up late making lists.

Medical permissions.

Travel plans.

Packing lists.

Backup plans for the backup plans.

Because worrying became a skill.

And skills don’t disappear overnight.

Maybe that’s the real challenge.

Not learning how to be a princess.

Learning how to stop being the soldier every minute of every day.

Learning that having help isn’t weakness.

Learning that partnership doesn’t mean losing independence.

Learning that maybe, just maybe, somebody can carry part of the backpack.

The truth is, I don’t know who I am when I’m not taking care of people.

And by people, I mean everybody but me.

That’s a tough thing to admit.

Some of my kids haven’t been thrilled with the fact that I’m putting myself first these days.

Not because they’re bad people.

They’re not.

But they’re used to having access to me.

To my time.

My energy.

My emotional bank account.

And slowly they’re learning something that I’m still trying to learn myself:

I matter too.

That sounds simple when I write it.

It’s not simple when I feel it.

Because the reality is, I never really mattered.

Not in my childhood.

Not in my first marriage.

Not in most of my adult life.

Everybody needed me.

My husband needed me.

My children needed me.

Life needed me.

And I became very, very good at being needed.

What I never became good at was being cared for.

Then along comes this man who keeps insisting that I matter.

And honestly?

It’s terrifying.

Not because he’s done anything wrong.

Because he hasn’t.

I believe in him.

I believe in him more than I believe in most people.

But trust is different.

And I’ve realized something important.

This isn’t a relationship problem.

It’s a survival problem.

I know he’s trustworthy.

My nervous system doesn’t.

My mind can look at him and see a man who shows up consistently.

A man who keeps his word often enough that my argument is becoming increasingly difficult to defend.

A man who genuinely wants the best for me.

A man who has earned trust.

But somewhere deep inside, the little survivalist who got me through childhood, through marriage, through single motherhood, through every hard season of my life, is still standing there with her arms crossed saying:

“Yeah, but let’s keep an eye on him.”

Because survival doesn’t know how to relax.

Survival doesn’t know how to hand over the backpack.

Survival doesn’t know how to believe that somebody else can carry part of the weight.

Survival only knows one thing:

If I don’t do it, nobody will.

And honestly, is that a control issue?

Probably.

Why wouldn’t it be?

If I wasn’t in control, life didn’t just get messy.

We weren’t talking about forgetting to pay a bill or burning dinner.

We were talking about Armageddon.

Addiction.

Evictions.

Children making choices that kept me awake all night.

Crisis after crisis after crisis.

Of course I learned to grip the steering wheel.

That belief kept me alive for a very long time.

The problem is that the things that help us survive aren’t always the things that help us feel safe.

And maybe that’s what I’m learning.

Not how to trust him.

How to teach myself that I no longer have to survive everything alone.

The old version of me would have tested him.

I would have created impossible expectations.

Given him a task he couldn’t complete.

Set him up to fail so I could point at the wreckage and say:

“See? I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

But I don’t want to do that anymore.

I actually want to trust him.

I’m just learning how.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

And with a truly impressive number of mistakes along the way.

I don’t have the answer yet.

But I’m working on it.

And for the official record, because accuracy matters:

The fight was still his fault.

Love, laughter, and a little bit of chaos,

Fina

Veni, Vidi, Vici

I'd love to hear from you.

Have you ever felt like your survival mode was running the show?

What would your inner princess say back to your inner survivalist?

Leave a comment below or send me a message.