Feeling Useful
As I mentioned in my previous post, I crawled under the house (willingly!) to help my husband insert a wire through the bottom of our house and into our bedroom so we could set up local channels. I'd had an event to go to later that afternoon (the pool party I mentioned), but the second he asked if I'd be willing to help him with it, I leapt on it with gusto! It'd been two years since I last crawled under the house. The last time was to pull out kittens. I guess it's the fact that I love going on adventures, and usually the underside of the house is uncharted territory.
At first, no channels popped up, which disappointed him. But I did as much research as I possibly could (I'm the Internet Queen in my household, a term that my oldest sister made up when I was a kid), and after playing around with the controls on the smart TV, we learned that we had at least 27 local channels that could be viewed.
The look of elation on his face when he turned it to the channel that had the Ohio Buckeyes and the Oregon Ducks playing on the screen lit up my heart. He was happy, which made me happy.
Then he watched the game and proceeded to give me "training" exercises on loud noises. That...wasn't exactly fun, but I'll take it.
The next day after church, we went to the store. He wanted cookies, but he's diabetic. So then he asked if there were any sugar-free cookies in our grocery store.
I turned around, viewed the shelves, then pointed them out to him. Once again, he had that look of elation on his face. Then he said, "Good eye, baby!"
Guys, when I say that it felt like I was being patted on the head like I was a dog, I don't mean that condescendingly. I'm not used to hearing words of affirmation, mainly because I rarely got it when I was growing up. Sure, my parents said it, but it was more of an off-handed statement, and it didn't happen a lot. That and my mom had a tendency of saying, "Good girl!" like you would speak to a dog, which I thought was normal until a friend of mine pointed out that, no, it's not.
I've always loved helping others. I don't expect to hear words of thanks, but their happiness is enough to satisfy me.
Maybe...maybe it's an inferiority complex thing. I consider myself so low on the food chain that knowing that I'm able to prove my worth is...gratifying. Coworkers, bosses, my own spouse. Not that my husband has ever made me feel like I was less. No, I pinned that onto myself a long time ago. I've considered myself "the spare", the one everyone would forget in an instant, the one that everyone wishes would just disappear.
So when I do something that makes people happy, it's enough to have me think to myself, "Maybe I am worth something."
-Sable