I like organized things. I like neat things. I like things that make sense, and I surely wish we existed in a perfect world. Of course, it would be boring as anything, and I imagine I’d prefer some disorder if things were perfect. I guess you always want what you don’t have. But I like things that are orderly, easy to define and understand, and clearly defined and understood by everyone.
That’s how I like myself. I want to present a box of perfection to other people. I want them to know exactly what I’m thinking and I want them to know exactly why I do the things I do. Some of it comes from a fear of being understood, but a lot of it just comes from a need to appear correct, reasonable, logical, and sensible. Not just so everyone will like me, but so that I like myself too.
I feel like I’ve been embracing this semi-true narrative of myself and seeing it as the whole truth. And by that I mean my personality type — I’m severely Type A and that’s okay. But sometimes it means I’m so rigid that I can’t forgive myself or allow myself any room for error. One “tenet” of my personality type is that I stick to my word, and I think I embrace it so heavily to the point that any misstep results in sheer panic. I hate myself, the rest of my day is ruined, and I begin assigning negative feelings and words to myself. It’s like I’m not allowed to mess up. I’m not allowed to change my mind, which is funny because if one of my things is to have a reason for everything I do, then why can’t I change my mind if I have a good reason?
Beats me… I put myself in this box and I don’t really know how to get out. Certainly no one has such high standards for me. I asked my supervisor what happens when you accidentally forget to include something in an email to a coach, and she said — you just tell them when you realize, and you don’t panic. They are not strangers to doing things “on the fly”. “We are human”, she said. We all make mistakes, and 99% of the time these mistakes are not life or death, they just make things slightly more difficult. And what if instead of mistakes I wrote “decisions”?
I suppose I could look at my past and wonder if anything from it has caused me to place such high pressure on myself. I had always thought that growing up in a competitive environment yet having parents who didn’t necessarily subscribe to that was a blessing — I mean, it was, and still is. But because I didn’t do well in school, I’d just laugh and pretend it wasn’t that important anyway, but the truth is that even if I tried, I’d be so behind. So I figured I wouldn’t try at all. And to be honest, everything in life has worked out, so it’s fine, but that attitude of “well if I try I won’t be as good as them, so why even bother?” has bitten me in the butt quite a few times.
I had a competitive environment with my friends — we didn’t say it, but we all wanted to be better than the others. I had a similar situation at home — I have always felt like a failure compared to my sisters — I can’t do art, I can’t do math, I’m not the best cook. I definitely inherited a lot of sensitivity from my mom, as well as slight anger issues from my dad, so…I hit the jackpot! But seriously. It has always been a struggle for me to understand my emotions and realize that they aren’t all that bad to have because compared to everyone else, I had so many emotions. My issue is that I have still been fighting who I am at the core, and then assigning these boundaries to myself that aren’t really necessary.
I am not going to be like anyone else, and no one else is going to be exactly like me. Not everyone will like me, not everyone will understand me, not everyone will even try to understand me. So that’s the thing. I can’t control what other people do and how they react. But if I can be proud of myself for something. Even the littlest thing, and that’s enough.
I’m still figuring out how to break out of this box and how to “let myself” do that, but I think I need to start thinking about other people “let me” do that. How they forgive me, how they see my efforts and appreciate them, how they interact with me and love me and spend time with me. If other people can be so gracious to me, why can’t I be that gracious to myself? If I am gracious to others, then why can’t I do the same for myself?
