feeling guilty

I carry around a lot of guilt. I don't know where this behavior came from. Some people say that Catholics always feel guilty, so it's possible that in the second grade, Sister Veronica taught me to the art of feeling guilty in addition to my Hail Marys and Our Fathers. It could also be an Asian thing, though I've never really discussed it enough with other Asians to say for sure.

I suspect, however, that the most likely source are my parents and their frequent use of emotional blackmail. If I had to pick, the birth of my guilty conscience probably took place when I was 12. My dad was home, and my mom got angry at him, so she took my sister and me to a Chinese restaurant for lunch. She didn't invite my dad, and we didn't bring anything back for him, so he was really cranky when we came home. Instead of dealing with it with my mom like a rational human being, he sorta laid it into my sister and me for not being more considerate. When you're 12, an angry dad seems like the scariest person alive, so when he was yelling at me, I made a permanent mental note to always consider the other people around you.

This is not to say that I'm an all-around selfless person. Rather, I can usually identify what other people want. Whether I actually do the thing that they want is another story (especially when they want me to talk a lot -- that's something I don't like doing on cue). The problem is, whereas my friends at school will usually do what they want and say f*** it, I do what I want and become wracked with guilt. I think about what I've done and the possible ramifications until it makes me sick. The only way for me not to feel sick is if I totally push it out of my brain, but nine chances out of ten, something somewhere will remind me of my selfishness, and the bad thoughts reemerge. And the bad part is that many times, the other people doesn't even give a sh*t.

Two things happened this week that really brought this all-consuming, usually irrational guilt into light. The first involves my mom. For a while, I've known that I was going to Chicago. There's not really any room for negotiation anymore. Gary and I may go to California in the future, but the one thing that's certain is that I will be in Chicago next year. My mom sorta knew this too, but I never really wanted to talk about it with her. After two and a half years in my parents' house, I felt like I would be abandoning my mom, like I was leaving her lonely and depressed. Sure, she has my dad, but if you've ever met my parents, you'd understand that their differences oftentimes gets in the way of them enjoying things together. So I kept making myself deadlines to talk to my mom so that I could console her about her impending loss. But every time I thought about it, it made me feel like a bad, ungrateful daughter.

Earlier this week, we had dinner together. There was nothing unusual about it: I sat quietly as my mom rattled on about random stories that she collected throughout the week. Out of the blue, she says, "It's going to be so sad with you and Chris gone." Tears started to well up in my eyes. I tried to play it off by saying that she had Nicholas (her one-year-old grandnephew), but my mom can tell when I'm crying from a mile away. She asked me what was wrong and tried to cajole the reason out of me for a good minute and a half before I finally felt comfortable saying, "I don't want you to be lonely when I leave." At which point, the woman LAUGHED. "Oh no no no" she said, "When I say that to you and Chris, I'm just trying to make you feel guilty!" Then she went on explain how she knows I'm at that age, that she has lots of stuff to do with her life after I'm gone, blah blah blah. Relieved to know that I'm not the terrible ingrate that I thought I was, I finished my meal in peace.

My guilt isn't confined to family matters; it extends to the professional sphere as well. Last semester, I offered to volunteer with an organization that I externed with last year. While I wanted to do some pro bono work, my main motivation was to work with the organization's legal director, who, in my humble opinion, is the greatest lawyer that I've ever worked for. She never takes on volunteers because she doesn't like having to supervise them, but she made a special case for me.

To make sure that she didn't regret her decision, I wanted to wow her with my extensive legal research skills. So I started the semester doing a couple of memos, and about four weeks in, she asked me to research potential causes of action for a certain case. The case involved a pretty unique fact pattern, which meant that I had to be really creative to make it fit into the law. All of this lawyer's most notable successes was based on really creative legal analysis, so I knew this was my chance to shine. The problem was, I didn't. My workload first semester was 100% heavier than I anticipated, and I let the project slide. I originally told her I would have the memo in one week, which turned into two, which turned into never. Not only did I not do the assignment, but I never emailed her during the semester to explain what happened. I felt so terrible that I had to tell myself not think about it in Vietnam. The way I looked at it, I killed the greatest hope I had of becoming the best public interest attorney I could be, and all because I couldn't send a timely email to the woman explaining myself.

To salvage respect she had left for me, I sent her a note late week. I could have called her or emailed her, but I thought a handwritten note would most fully express my deep regret and embarrassment. In the note, I went on and on about how much I respect her and love working with her and how sorry I was that I wasn't able to pull through as promised. It took a few days, but she finally responded to my note just now. And you know what she said? She said that I was SILLY, that she totally understood the snowball effect of law school, that she wasn't offended at all, and that she had another project for me if I was interested. I am, of course, relieved that she didn't chew me out, and I know this whole experience taught me to get my butt into gear, but I also feel like a supreme dork-o for spending precious moments of my life worrying about this.

I wish I could turn off the guilty conscience or at least turn down the dial a notch or two. As you can see, it doesn't mesh well with my mole-ly personality, which would rather deliberate the offense ad nausuem rather than nip it in the bud by talking with the other person. Maybe there's a support group for all the guilty-feeling moles out there. If you find it, call me.