We were in the rental car, ready to leave. From the curb, my mom leaned toward the car window where my kids were settling in for the trip to the airport.
“Goodbye. Goodbye. Be good,” my mom said, waving.
“But not too good,” said my dad.
My head exploded.
Wait a minute! There’s such a thing as “too good”? This was not the message I had been given for the first 45 years of my life.
But-not-too-good lodged in my brain and began conspiring to get me to look at my life, the life I had built for myself by being “too good”: Attend Ivy League college, graduate at the top of my class at law school, marry the man my family approved of, become a partner at my law firm, raise two kids who themselves are heading to college soon, take care of everything my husband and family need and want. And, of course, made it look easy.
I firmly believed perfection wasn’t just achievable, it was desirable.
I declined But-not-too good’s invitation to look at my life because somewhere, deep inside, I knew what would happen if I did.
But-not-too-good upped the stakes and made me stop breathing. I developed paradoxical vocal fold motion, a breathing disorder in which my vocal cords closed over the top of my windpipe when I tried to inhale. Dr. Patel stuck a camera up my nose and down my throat and I watched as my body prevented itself from breathing. I spent weeks working with a speech therapist relearning how to breathe.
Dr. Patel told me, “There are three organic causes for paradoxical vocal fold motion. You don’t have any of those. We fixed this but it’s going to come out somewhere else. I suggest you start working with a psychotherapist to learn to manage your stress.”
At my first visit with my new therapist I told her about my breathing problem and the whole But-not-too-good situation. She asked me to describe a situation that wasn’t stressful but I felt stressed anyway. I told her I get stressed when I’m driving and have to wait for a red light. I’d sit at the light watching the clock in my car click out the minutes and freak out.
She told me to write “But not too good. – Dad” on a Post-It® note and use it to cover the clock in my car.
It worked!
I told my therapist about the miracle cure at my next session and asked her what else I could change. She and I spent the next few weeks picking the low hanging fruit of my But-not-too-good issues.
I didn’t have a full grasp then about the closet inside my head where I’d been storing all the doubts and fears about my life for the past 30 years.
As we continued our work together, we got closer and closer to that closet until finally, the closet door blew off its hinges. Out poured a mountain of shit. Shit I didn’t want to see. Shit I didn’t even want to think about. Shit I should have been processing but didn’t.
I spent the next five years eating my way through that mountain of shit.
I became profoundly depressed, going to bed every night wishing I would die in my sleep. I woke up every morning, despondent that I was still alive.
I wanted to die but I had seen what suicide does to those left behind, especially children. I tried to think of a way to kill myself that wouldn’t look like suicide: Crashing my car, falling from a cliff. All those methods were just as likely to leave me alive but in worse shape.
I spent my days in a state of utter hopelessness. Literally lacking all hope. And anhedonic: I was incapable of experiencing any positive emotion.
I remember sitting in the audience of a comedy, a farce. I knew objectively what I was watching was hilarious. I looked around me at the audience, smiling and laughing and I felt absolutely nothing.
Despite believing that nothing would ever be okay again, I set to work changing everything that was “too-good” about my life.
Deciding what to change was unbelievably hard. You know your life isn’t going well when you start quoting Sondheim lyrics. Cinderella’s lament from Into the Woods was a perfect fit:
But how can you know what you want
Till you get what you want
And you see if you like it?
What I want most of all
Is to know what I want.
One of the first things I told my therapist was how good my marriage was. Whatever else was going on, at least that wasn’t one of the problems. The willfulness and totality of my self-deception was remarkable. When I finally worked up the courage to really look, I could see my husband didn’t contribute anything to our relationship: No emotional support, no thought, no effort. Even worse, it became clear to me that he wasn’t interested in changing anything about our marriage if it meant that he would have to do any of the emotional work.
He had planned to take a 6-month sabbatical overseas. I told him it was his choice whether or not to go but I wouldn’t be living in our home when he got back. He went. We were in couples therapy by phone while he was gone and in person when he got back but it became clear to me that I no longer loved him. I filed for divorce.
I had never felt at home in Colorado. I began spending weekends with friends in New York City, taking the redeye out on Friday night and the redeye back on Sunday night. I had to arrive early at the airport on Sunday so I would have enough time to sit in the bathroom and cry. What’s wrong with this picture?
When I was 54, my kids were both graduated from college and I stopped hemorrhaging tuition. I left my job, moved to New York City, and started my own law firm.
Although I had never lived in New York City, it was the first place I lived that felt like home. I was where I belonged and the culmination of the changes I needed to make.
I remember telling my new therapist in New York City that I was never going to be happy and that was okay. I just wanted to continue not being depressed. She and I continued the hard work I had started before my move. I learned to see things differently. I stopped assuming everything was my fault. I stopped feeling responsible for everyone else’s happiness.
Then, one day, ten years after But-not-too-good came into my life, I felt something really weird. I stopped what I was doing to try to identify the feeling.
It was happiness. It felt good but deeply foreign.
Today, happiness is my normal state of being. Of course I feel sad, angry, or disappointed but only when circumstances cause those feelings. I’m resilient. I’m self-aware. I’m kind to myself and others. I’m not perfect and I don’t want to be.
I’m good, but not too good.
