Checking the Mail and Being Selfish

Checking the mail (the process of retrieving letters from our mailbox) helped me find out something that was wrong with me. It was quite a significant thing and yet I literally didn’t know about it until a couple of months ago. My husband noticed it first.

We live in an upstairs apartment so our mail (post) doesn’t get pushed through a slot into our residence. If we want it we have to go downstairs with our mailbox key and retrieve it.

I’m more obsessive about the mail than my husband so I’m usually the one who gets it. He doesn’t care about it much because it’s usually just a pile of paper that goes straight from our mailbox into the recycling bin. He’s right, but I still like to get the mail on a fairly timely basis.

I realize that my obsession with checking the mail may well be something that’s wrong with me! But there was something more fundamentally wrong with me that it helpfully uncovered.

Anyway so I usually get the mail and I’m fine with that. It’s never been an issue except at the times when we’ve both been out together, since I invariably want to check it before we get the elevator back up to our apartment.

I was aware that I wanted to do this whereas my husband’s first choice would have been to go straight up to our apartment, since he didn’t care. So, knowing I was asking him to do me a favor by waiting for a moment or two, or longer if we missed the elevator, I would say “Is it alright if I check the mail?”

I think he progressed from saying “yes” or “go ahead” to at some point saying, with a clear degree of annoyance “Just say “I want to check it!” Why do you have to ask me?”

Clearly this was important so after that instead of saying “is it ok?” I would say “I want to check the mail”. I didn’t understand why he’d been annoyed at me noticing he was doing me a favor, and therefore asking if it was ok. I thought I was being considerate. But then I considered, I suppose a lot of his job is probably people asking him questions unnecessarily. He would rather not have that happen when he’s not at work. And if he never said no, and he didn’t, that made this an unnecessary question exactly like the work ones that annoy him.

I still wanted to check the mail and I suppose I felt like I needed to say something to make sure I did get to check it, since I cared about it and he didn’t. He’d told me what to say and so I would obediently say “I want to check the mail”. He would say ‘fine’ or ‘go ahead’, I’d get it, then by the time we got into our apartment I’d looked through it and could put it straight in the recycling.

To be fair it wasn’t like I had to say actual words from a script. It wasn’t like some weird game where if I said the wrong words I wouldn’t get to check the mail. I understood that the main point was, “I need you to do this in a way that doesn’t involve asking me if it’s ok”

So I was getting to check the mail and he wasn’t being annoyed with me, so everything was fine now. Right?

No, everything was not fine. Not for me. Emotionally I was not happy with the situation. It was a tiny piece of our lives but every time I had to say “I want….” without also saying “Is it ok?” that felt so wrong to me. I felt like I was being an asshole.

I was pretty sure that “is it ok?” was the polite thing to ask when I wanted to do something that might inconvenience someone else. Not asking was selfish! My husband had insisted I do something selfish!

So I was confused, but since it was a tiny piece of our lives and I had a solution that got me the mail without also annoying my husband – definitely a win-win! – I didn’t dwell on it. I assumed that if anything, the problem was his weird aversion to being asked “Is it ok?” I

I was even more sure that trying to change one’s spouse or argue over inconsequential stuff was a bad idea, than I was about it being a good idea, in general to check if someone is ok before I do something that inconveniences them. All the best marriage books said so. So did my memory of what had happened when I tried to do it anyway. It had not gone well. The books were correct!

That’s where we were at a couple of months ago, when my husband overheard me talking with my mother about my life growing up. He heard about a time on an extended family vacation when I was 12 years old, on which I had innocently spoken up about what I’d like to do, during a discussion of the possible group activities for that day. He heard about how my maternal grandmother shut me down with “Don’t be selfish, Helen!” After she said that the discussion continued, the adults all got to say what they wanted to do and an agreement was reached.

When my husband heard that the scales fell from his eyes about something. He’d noticed that I was very indirect about saying what I wanted. Quite frankly it was often annoying for him. [The next part is what he later explained to me about why it was annoying, as best I recall] It felt like I would try to push him into saying that he wanted to do something, so I’d get to do it, rather than simply saying I wanted to do it! It was needlessly complicated. It meant he had to guess whether me trying to get him to say something was ok, was simply my weird way of saying “I want to do this”.

A few weeks later he brought this up with me. He said “Hey, I realized something when I overheard you talking with you mother. I realized you literally can’t say what you want!“

So, I was totally confused and wondering why he said that thing that seemed so clearly wrong. About me! I know about me! “That’s not true about me!” I thought. “Why would my husband say that??? He sees me telling people what I want all the time. I get in trouble sometimes for complaining about things too much!”

I’m not sure how long it took for me to realize he was absolutely right. Maybe it was a little later in the same conversation. Maybe it the next day or a few days later. Anyway, somehow checking the mail came into my mind. That horrible feeling of wrongness when I said “I want” [to check the mail] came into my mind. And I realized yeah, I literally am not allowed to say what I want. Because when I did it as a child, I was shut down and told “Don’t be selfish, Helen!”

I was taught that it was wrong for me to express myself, who I am, what I want. It was wrong for me to make I statements, even though I statements are the ‘gold standard’ of how to communicate as effectively as possible when feelings are involved (see #5 in this excellent article).

It was actually worse than that, since right after I had been shut down with “Don’t be selfish!”, I watched other people being allowed to say what they wanted to do. Having a voice. Being part of the conversation. They were allowed, I was not allowed. The only thing I could conclude from that was, clearly there is something wrong with me that is not wrong with the other people present.

At this point some very powerful programming had installed in me: a rule “I am not allowed to say what I want” and a belief about myself: “there is something wrong with me that is not wrong with other people” The belief seems more pervasive and life-ruining than the rule and maybe that’s why I was able to notice it early in adulthood and realize it was a false belief based on false assumptions.

.By the time I reached young adulthood it had become clear to me that if my grandmother was more unkind to me than other people, that was about her not me. Some of my extended family also helpfully validated that for me at the time. I think I had already begun to see it for myself by then but I still appreciated the validation. And then I found a boyfriend and visited my grandparents with him in tow and miraculously, she treated me better from then on anyway.

So that took care of the false belief. On the other hand the “I am not allowed to say what I want” evidently sunk deep into my subconscious (since I was totally unaware of it). From there it thrived and placed very real and effective limits on what I could say to other people for the next 45 years, I had no idea that was happening. It was like a computer virus that had snuck in and was consuming my resources and messing up my life a bit, unbeknownst to me.

It messed up my life a bit because everything is more complicated if I want what I want (which of course I do) and can’t say it. It forces me to try to get other people to say they want it – since evidently everyone except me is allowed to say it. If I can get someone else to say they want it too, then maybe I’ll get to do it after all. My voice doesn’t count but theirs does.

There was another aspect to being shut down with “Don’t be selfish, Helen!” as a response to me saying “I want” (an I statement). This was also huge. I think I’ve only realized how huge it was quite recently. It was clear information that for me, self-expression was selfish. Everyone else came first. Self-care as a number one priority for me was wrong. Setting my own boundaries was wrong because that was self-care and was selfish. Saying no to others was selfish. Being kind was not a choice, it was an imperative. It was what I was supposed to do even when it was hurting me. Self-care was not an option because it was selfish.

So that was a pretty damaging belief. I think it’s likely it facilitated my past psychotic episodes, because I accidentally got on an “I must help others – the world” bandwaggon and I couldn’t get off. The needs out there are literally endless. I tried harder and harder and I sort of spun out of control. Became psychotic. I believe that realizing I was allowed to say ‘no’, having Permission to Rest, was a vital part of finding my way back to mental wellness and staying there. As was careful prioritizing. Take care of myself first. Then my immediate family. Then, if I have any bandwidth left, I can venture further. . But I don’t have to. It’s a choice. It’s always my choice to make.

I’m so happy I’ve realized these things. There are things that it hurts to find out, but it’s better to know. If I don’t know, I can’t do anything about them. Maybe the hardest part of AA is getting to step 1. Realizing something is wrong and realizing what it is.