THREE+ME: Traveling on a guilt trip

Real or imagined, responsibilities back home tripped me up during a weekend away

I was supposed to be at the airport by 5 a.m.

But at 5 a.m., I was still in bed.

Panic ensued, and fell right in line with my emotional trend of the previous few days.

See, I was about to go to Florida with a friend, and I should have been nothing but excited about it. Beaches! Relaxing! Warm weather that’s been as elusive in New England as a Bigfoot sighting!

But nope. So many moving parts kept tripping me up leading into this mini-vacation, and I felt like I was letting everybody down. Not just one or two people, but entire sets of people.

Maybe it’s a stepmom thing. Maybe it’s a girl thing. Maybe it’s a human thing. But I felt guilty because I couldn’t be everything to everybody. And whether or not these folks even needed me to be “everything,” I felt like I was failing them because I thought I should be.

THE HUSBAND

Let’s start with my better half. This was going to be the longest I’d been away from him since we’d started dating. He’d be left alone to fend for the kids, the house, the cats, all the chores and adulting, and I wouldn’t be there to help.

THE PARENTS

My folks were in town, for the first time in a while. And I managed to schedule this, unthinkingly, for the weekend they’d be here. Even though we met up for dinner the week before, I still felt terrible for leaving the state when they’d finally be in it.

THE FRIENDS

I have a super hard time making time for my friends, as I think most adults do. Yet here I was, scheduling an entire long weekend away with one friend – but what about all the other friends for whom I can barely scrape together an hour for a lunch date?

THE TRAVEL FRIEND

She’s the one I was going on this trip with, and I was still guilty because I feared how our friendship would fare after being stuck with each other for more than a handful of hours. Would we still like each other at the end of this?

THE STEPKIDS

And this was the big one. It was our weekend with the kids. And I was bailing.

We don’t get to see them all that often as it is, realistically – and here I was, gallivanting off with my girlfriend when I could have been home hanging out with them. And I felt bad.

It isn’t that I don’t think they can’t get by, or that my husband can’t handle them on his own. I know they all could survive just fine without me; they already had, for years, before I was even in the picture.

And that thought made me feel simultaneously better and worse. They didn’t need me. Good, because I was going away; but bad because – well, I kind of wanted them to need me. And knowing that they didn’t was both a relief and a regret.

I think that applies to all these scenarios I was feeling guilty about. Realistically, I know all these folks would get on just fine without me. I’m not nearly as important as I think I am. But I’m afraid of hurting people’s feelings, even if that hurt exists only in my mind.

To top off all these guilt trips I was putting myself through, I overslept the morning of the flight.

I’ve never gotten out of the house as fast as I did that morning, panic compounding my excessive dread of this trip. I was so frustrated for so many reasons, and that just made me more convinced the trip would be horrible on top of it all.

Somehow (thank God for the tiny-ness of T.F. Green Airport) I still made it, and we got to our flight.

And you know what?

The trip didn’t suck. In fact, it was downright awesome. Once I started to separate myself from my self-imposed guilt (though it never completely went away), I could get out of my own head enough to realize – I should appreciate where I was, instead of worrying about what I couldn't control from there anyway. And in the future, I need to maybe go a little easier on myself.

Because you know what else?

Everyone back at home survived just fine.

Email Emely Varosky at evarosky@heraldnews.com.