Ever since I can remember, I've had this relentless perfectionism as a constant awful companion. I want to do things the best way possible, make the wisest decisions, achieve highest possible outcomes. My mom used to (and still does) tease me that "Kristi must win", but it felt (and feels) more like "Kristi must do well or else *insert dire consequence* will happen..." I never really defined what the "or else" part meant - it boils down to failure by any definition. I also never defined the "do well" part, so it's an undefined, unattainable moving target. Striving for personal excellence is one thing, but I don't often do things halfway. I put a lot of pressure on myself when I don't pull off a triumphant victory, which, let's face it, is pretty much every freakin' day.
Hitting the mark or missing the mark is a conversation that happened a lot in my former context. I never really put the pieces together until recently, but hitting the mark in that context was never something I owned, while missing the mark was 100% always mine. I was never going to be good enough to hit any mark on my own, through my own choices or strength or possibilities. It's maybe not the lesson that was intended, but I internalized that into an endless feedback loop of "you're not enough/you're not good enough/you can't." And the floods of self-doubt started way back when, the constant second-guessing, the wondering if I could even breathe without making a mistake. Into adulthood that continued, as I got married and I was taught that I wasn't supposed to make final decisions and thus was responsible for neither the blame nor the glory because I wasn't the head of my household.
Now I'm an adult. Now I'm not in that context. Now I am the head of my household. Now...I still have the at times paralyzing self-doubt and non-stop second guessing of every blessed little thing. I worry, way too much. I agonized the other day that taking my kids for a donut before school was going to mess them up forever and probably contribute to long-term behavioral issues and weight struggles. It sounds ridiculous - and it is - but the struggle is real, and I'm not saying that in a #stupidhashtag sort of way.
I'm trying to wade through so much detritus, the wreckage of former things. I'm trying to find a solid place to put my feet. I'm trying to find a space in which to breathe, to not constantly analyze every move into a total blur, to make a decision (however mundane) and feel good about it and not agonize over it at night for a week or a month after.
I'm back in therapy - shocker to no one - and it's starting to sound like a broken record. Between my counselor and my dearest ones, everyone's repeating a similar refrain: "You're ok. You're doing fine. Give yourself a break." And it is so hard. I can at any moment rattle off a list of all the ways I'm actively and currently failing. I have (brokenly) joked many times that it's easier for me to make that list rather than hear it from someone else and be surprised by it. But for the love, can I just give myself a break, a little grace and space to be human? Can I just take a deep breath and acknowledge that, ok, things didn't go according to one plan, sure, but there are other plans, and life is good?
There's a song about tattoos that I quite like - it talks about how tattoos are permanent and the singer carries some that no longer mean quite the same as when they were done, but that it's likely he would get the same ones again, because they tell his story. I have a few now, and they are part of my story. They all speak to moving forward, to learning to be ok with myself and my story, and to cutting myself some slack. This one I just got today:
"breathe" is in my 9 year old's writing, and "be kind" is in my 11 year old's.
I need the reminder. I need a visual, potent reminder of these two basic things - breathe and be kind. It will definitely be helpful in certain situations when I need a reminder that punching someone in the nose is not the best way to deal with people but more importantly, it's a reminder to not be reactive and to be kind to myself - to cut myself some slack. Having it in my kids' handwriting reminds of me that more eyes than mine are observing the patterns I set, in a "this is how you do life" kind of way.
Breathe. Be kind. Some people just get it; some of us, we have tattoos to help us remember.
This entry has been rattling around in my brain for a long time. I keep writing it and deleting it, proving that one *can* learn to self-edit. But today as I was running, it kept swirling around and insisting on being heard, to the point that I ended up sprinting at the end of a distance I usually end with gasping and struggling. It's clear that sometimes self-editing can, for me at least, turn into hiding my true feelings for fear of how someone else will react, which in the end causes even more confusion than if I'd just been bluntly honest in the first place. So, since I think best with my fingers on the keyboard, and since sometimes I figure out what I'm thinking by the time I'm done writing, I'm going to see what happens.
I think it's safe to say that I never imagined my current life. I had a plan, which I followed, and I eschewed any suggestion of a Plan B, because I had a plan, which I followed. It was a bit unimaginative of me to not even consider other possibilities, but that's not what you do in the context of my former life. In that world, you have a "calling" and you do what you can to follow that or risk ending up as a cautionary tale of someone who had a calling and ignored it and ended up bitter and regretful for the rest of life.
My former life had a very rigid context, lots of rules, lots of expectations, lots of…stuff. You could say I didn't choose it - I was born into it. I didn't choose it until I did, when as an adult I made a conscious choice to continue in that context for my livelihood and future. But at the same time, I started asking questions, and was quickly shot down on so many fronts. Things didn't always make sense to me, but in that context it was definitely better to have faith than to have a reason. I perpetuated lots of things that were narrow and hurtful - hurt people hurt people…that was me. I didn't want to or mean to, but looking back it's clear that I did. I internalized things and unmindfully passed them along.
I remember telling people along the way that I wasn't sure I was good at that life. My ex was gregarious and made friends easily. It's harder for me, so I hid behind him a lot. "We" had friends, though I was never sure that it mattered that I was part of the picture. But it was my world and all my fb friends and all my acquaintances and all the people in my phone were from that life. While church had been hard and hurtful since childhood, and church people had consistently let me down, I was alway still hopeful that one day that supposedly characteristic love would come into play when the chips were really down.
When my chips fell down - when my world blew up - almost all God's children suddenly clammed up. And I've spent the last good while being really mad and devastated and betrayed by that. I feel like while I had been on this journey to figure some stuff out, not because it was what I'd heard my whole life but what I really, deep down, no pretending, believe, this catastrophic change sort of shut that whole process down. I've talked in previous posts about how I've struggled and how eventually just had to stop going to any church of any kind. I so wasn't prepared for the deafening silence of my former world. I wasn't prepared to be left standing there by myself. I wasn't prepared for people who had no involvement in church whatsoever to be the ones who reached out and cared and gave me non-judgey space to just be. I wasn't prepared to feel so much and so deeply about the fact that not one single person from the actual church I used to be part of ever even tried to contact me when I returned to that city. And I wasn't prepared for my leadership and colleagues in that world to make such pitiful attempts to get the juicy details but otherwise completely leave me to founder in the aftermath.
And now I'm done. I've written about forgiveness and I've read about forgiveness, and it's striking that people from almost all world views all agree that not forgiving is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I've been so mad and hurt, which is silly on many levels. I should not have been so surprised. Nothing in my life experience would have suggested a positive response. I should not have been so let down. Nothing in my life experience would have suggested meaningful support, especially if I didn't swallow a party line and proclaim my faith and a victorious forecast despite such shitty circumstances.
So. I've spent some time acknowledging the anger and hurt and betrayal, and maybe just a little time reveling in it. And now it's time to keep moving forward. My current life is good. I have so many reasons to be grateful and happy and hopeful. I can look back and see those shitty circumstances as a gift - not the kind that makes the receiver super happy in the moment but the kind that in the long run turns out to be the best kind of gift.
I can even understand, kind of, the silence. I get that it's scary when someone who was just like you suddenly is not like you anymore at all. I get that people don't know what to say or don't want to intrude, or truthfully maybe don't even notice, since they have their own lives to live. And of course fb feeds are such carefully curated presentations that almost always disguise and restate a multitude of story lines. I remember, before my story took a severe plot twist, taking a deep breath and messaging a friend from college who seemed to have gone through some stuff. And I remember her hesitance to say anything and how I might not have even noticed except for a few things that seemed weird. And I remember thinking it was scary that someone's life could not turn out the way we had all planned, and being grateful that I wasn't in that place (oh, the irony). So I get it. I've been there. I've been the quiet one, and it wasn't a malicious or deliberate quietness.
I've had a number of conversations recently with other people who totally get my former context, since it was theirs as well, and who, like me, are in search of something different. We're all at different stages in the journey, and it's encouraging to see that there is a progression. I used to think the very worst thing that could happen to me would be for my marriage to fall apart and to not be able to do what I was doing for a career and in life. And don't get me wrong, it was awful, the kind of awful that has no words. It's excruciating.
But it's not the end of me. Whether or not it's devastating and soul-destroying is up to me, 100%. And I choose not. I choose a new set of parameters:
I choose to thrive.
I choose to exist fully in my present, and to learn and be thoughtful and kind and extend compassion and not let anyone else define me.
I choose to make my own peace with God rather than make my life look like someone else's ideal.
I choose to not let other people's actions, or lack of them, dictate mine.
I choose to not be silent when I see a friend in need.
I choose to be authentically me, even if that includes the occasional swear word or a new way of looking at life (or writing something that's hard to read for some people who are especially dear to me).
I choose to enjoy the people I have in my life, and really, I've hit the jackpot this time around.
I choose to not waste any more time wishing things had been different and drinking poisonous toasts to dismantled illusions.
I choose to live. I put this song on here because when I first heard it, all I thought of was my boys and how I want them to not be afraid to live life as boldly as they can. And then I thought…well, I should probably set the example...
Tonight I'm in pain - physical pain, intentionally inflicted. And I'm pondering the idea of purposely embracing pain in order to gain something of value, whether that value be beauty or wisdom or even just a personal, "This. So much this."And I'm pondering the reason why when I succeed at something I'm quick to apologize or denigrate it…and why it's easier for me to be brave with words on a screen or paper than opening my mouth…and all the little things that define a person, like hobbies and interests and likes and dislikes.
So much seemingly disconnected pondering. Feels…ponderous.
Tonight I did something I've wanted to do for years…years, people. I got a tattoo. Yes…me…a tattoo…me and needles…pain… Everyone loves their own tattoo, right? I mean, it would totally stink if you didn't love your own tattoo since it's not coming off any time soon. I'm a fan of mine. Seriously. It's cool - to me. And that's fine, because it's mine. I'm not going to post a picture here, for no other reason than that it's mine (well, and also because I just got it done, and my skin is very angry with me right now). I think it's lovely and meaningful - and it hurt like I don't even have proper, non-vulgar words to describe. "Ow" doesn't quite cover it. But I went to that shop knowing that it was going to hurt and opening myself up to that hurt on purpose in order to gain something valuable to me. It didn't save the world or change anyone's mind about anything or have anything to do with anyone else. Pain is not fun and it's hard and it challenges me mentally and emotionally - but it also can lead to something beautiful.
I've been having constant growing pains for a few years now. It's been quite the road. I don't honestly feel like I gain ground every day, but I can look back and say I'm not the same as I was, and that's definitely a good thing. It hurts to lose things and go through change and be challenged to do life differently. It hurts to leave the familiar and embark on a new path. It hurts to be let down by people. It hurts to let myself down. But pain can bring beauty and value if I let it. It can be part of the process of making something new and meaningful. It can be part of the healing process, to feel the pain and acknowledge it and then let it bring change.
The rest of my pondering tonight is related to my growing pains. Learning things about myself is not always fun. Sometimes I learn things I'd rather not know, or at least rather not share with the world. No one wants their weaknesses on display, not even for the trusted inner circle. It's embarrassing and painful. Why do I apologize for being smart/right/good at something/successful? Why is it hard for me to use my voice? Why do I hesitate when asked to identify the things I like to do and that make me happy? Does this mean I'm not really a grown up? Now obviously adulting is hard - blanket forts and crayons (ooh, and napping!) sound like a much more fun option about 99.9% of the time. But…I suppose I can stop at this point and let myself wallow in the pain or lack of answers, or I can push on in search of something beautiful.
