WARNING: LONG
You know I’ve been silent as of late. That has to do in part with a severe amount of work that leaves me exhausted and with no desire to do anything but get home, walk Basil and crash in front of the TV. It also has to do with a strange condition that -for over a month- has caused my muscles to hurt and hurt badly, with the feeling that I’ve been punched and full of bruises. Until I can finally see the neurologist tomorrow, my regular doctor has me on a very strong nervous system medicine that also makes me sleepy.
The other thing I’ve been doing is some serious self-reflection. For that I needed space, silence. “Me” time, as it were.
All my life my identity was that of being my parents’ child. Both of them seeing the other in me, both of them criticizing the other in me and through me, both of them making me feel that I wasn’t good enough. With my dad it was because I was too much like my mom and too much from HCA. With my mom it was because I was “just like him” or, not good enough in general (“Mom, I got a B+ in chem!” “Oh. I used to get As”).
I know that both of them were doing the best they could, but invariably what they did took a toll on me. I spent my life trying to be perfect, to please everybody, and with an acute feeling that if I could plan things out and control it all and stick to a method, things would come out perfectly. I would receive the reward for my efforts, I would be loved, I would have what I dreamed of. So I set myself a plan and proceeded to stick with it.
If I have to face my past clearly, though, I have to admit that for most of my college years I was lost. Majoring in a career that I enjoyed, but that in a sense was easy for me, and therefore I wasn’t truly challenging myself or going for something I deeply loved. Only later did I realize that I had not studied what I really wanted to. By then it was too late for me to change, I was stressed that my mom would flip out if I changed majors so late in the game. What with the scholarship and all, you know. After graduating, and with the clarity that I was NOT going back to HCA, I enrolled in a Master’s Program. In it, I came close to working on what I really love, but not. Again, something stopped me. I enjoyed what I was doing, but it wasn’t my heart’s full desire. I was too afraid to veer off the charted path. After all, I’d heard too many times from my mom that it was better to stay on the “safe” zone of things, to bet on the sure horse, to plan for the worst.
Throughout this, I was looking for love. As time went by and I got older, I adjusted my plans. Instead of college, meet man, do Master’s, get married, start PhD, order babies and turn 30, I realized my life would be more one of study now and love later. I thought, “If I keep doing the sure thing, love will find me”. My insecurities plagued me, but I still hoped for love. I wanted to have it all: The job and the love, but within the boundaries I had set up and the plan I had drawn up.
When I met the Engineer, I knew I had found the one. We had a good relationship, but sometimes had horrible fights. This brought out a horrible side in me, full of all my insecurities, my fears. In looking at them, I always had the clarity that they had way too much to do with my parents. Whenever I fought with the Engineer, I would get into horrible bouts of sadness and self-tormenting (“you are not good enough, you cannot do anything right”). When things with him eventually crashed, and I remembered how with him my insecurity and fears were so strong, I thought it was good to not have him around, so that I could leave a healthier life.
At some point throughout all this, I began therapy. With time and my fabulous therapist (and my friend Miss M, who, by being my roommate was my de facto “other” therapist), I began to understand myself more. I began to see just how much all the years had shaped my heart into what it was. Mostly, I got the courage to see the pain, to see the wounds, and to start working through them.
Lately I’ve realized that it was not just with the Engineer that I had bad fights that rendered me on the negative thought process. It’s every time I feel I’ve not done good enough. It happened with Claude in TX, it happened with my ex in college, it happened, of course, with my parents. This does not happen with strangers or with people I have a small connection with. Only with those I love deeply. Conclusion: My innate desire to improve things, to please the people I love the most, leads me to try to be perfect and when things don’t work out in that way, I punish myself.
Let’s take for example the Claude conversation, when two very serious moments (OK, one conversation, one fight) took place. In one such conversation I began to again think the negative thoughts. I was not good for anything. I began to put myself down. When asked by Claude why I was so tense, so mean, so negative, so…whiny, so sorry for myself, I just replied I’d had it hard. It was hard for me to let go of the ghosts of my past. That I was trying, but that it was a slow process. She then pointed out that sometimes it seems that instead of dealing with the things that affect me, I’ve adopted them as some sort of other badge that makes me flawed, that I enjoy because it gives me attention from people. She pointed out my IBS as an example of this, and how it seems I’m cavalier about it, going on about how “I can’t eat this, that, or that” instead of being quiet about it, not making it something that affects me, but that I live with, just as she does with her health issues (which are far more serious than my IBS).
As I’ve reflected on those words during the past weeks, I’ve made some commitments, as you know. But I haven’t stopped thinking, and the truth is, I’ve come to realize that while not entirely right, my dearest Claude hit a nerve. I have cloaked myself under the things that have affected me, and while I work on them, I still hide behind them whenever I mess up. I treat someone badly, they point it out, and I respond with “sorry, it’s just that I’m over-sensitive, my dad always criticized me”. I act negatively when I mess up, “well, my dad never appreciated what I did”. I make a choice I’m not happy with, “well, I went for the sure thing, because my mom taught me to always expect the worst”.
OK, well, yes. True. Those are reasons, perhaps, but not excuses, and now that I am 31, should I not take a bit more responsibility for my actions?
So like a silkworm that’s begun unraveling, I’ve started to pull out the things that cover me. This needs to be done, because though the layers are protective, they trap me in.
I am, of course, scared of what I’m going to find once I get to the bottom of this. Who am I, if not the child of my parents, the girl who felt unloved and abandoned when they divorced? Who am I, if not the insecure teenager with the weird accent?
In her autobiography, Jane Fonda writes about the process of “leaving her father’s house”. Of leaving behind the baggage that she carried about her dad, and how that has freed her. I am, in a sense, leaving my parents’ house. For many years I’ve lived away from them looking for some balance, but deep inside I’ve remained the child who wanted to please them (and everyone else, for that matter), who wanted to be perfect. This search for perfection has worn me out and has taken a very expensive toll on my soul. I cannot treat myself badly anymore and I have to grow up. My past is what shaped me in many ways, but it can no longer be the excuse for the things I do today. And if there is one clear thing, is that I want to stop living in fear that I won’t be loved, or that I will fail. I want to stop trying to please everyone. I want to stop expecting the worst, I want to follow my heart, take that turn that I know I want but I am scared to take. It takes shedding some skin and knowing that I may feel lonely for a while, but it needs to be done. I cannot live my life half-way.
