This might be pretty long -- I've been thinking about it since leaving therapy earlier tonight and I need to sort it out. I sort out by writing. Sorry in advance. :-)

Current Me vs. Me I’d Like To Be
Current me is always fighting. Whether it’s someone, something, or some goal, I never reach the end of anything, because there’s always just one more hurdle….and then one more after that….and when I think I’ve cleared the last one and won the race, I get disqualified on a technicality and have to go back to the start. Nothing in my life ever feels “settled.”

I had a friend tell me once that even on my best days I’m incredibly depressed, but that she put up with it because I still had a sense of humor. You know what it’s like to have other people view your whole identity as “permanently depressed”? It doesn’t give me a chance to be anything else, or even to show that I can be anything else. It sets me up as hopeless from the start, doesn’t allow the glimmer of hope that things can be different someday. Which is, of course, exactly what my parents did.

When I was in mid-high school, maybe, my dad made me mow the backyard. We had a rusty old gas grill out there, and I stumbled and bumped into it, and knocked it loose. I finished mowing the lawn, came in and told my dad, and went to my room. Pretty soon I heard them talking in the kitchen and, being an inveterate snoop, sat at the top of the stairs and listened in. They were talking about me. I won’t tell you what was said, though I remember – but the upshot of it was that they thought I was too stupid ever to amount to anything and that life was just going to eat me alive. That if I couldn’t even mow the damn lawn right, could I do anything right? My mom was pretty sure I was going to leech off them forever because I was too stupid to take care of myself.

There’s been a lot of people in my life who thought I was just stupid. Or lazy, that’s the other big one. “You know, Candace, if you’d just APPLY YOURSELF, you’d do fine.” I’d be a rich woman if I’d collected a dollar from everyone who told me that. In response, I have worked my *** off to prove them wrong. But you know what? No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t satisfy them. (A 3.9 GPA isn’t very good, you know. My dad said so.)

And yet, I believe “them” in the face of all the people I’ve met since then who affirm me. At my college graduation,my algebra teacher participated as faculty. I have an enormous, well documented mathematical learning disability, and algebra nearly did me in. After the ceremony, there were some tents set up on the central plaza and a small reception. I had a few friends and my mom there. Tim came over to congratulate me. Kathy (the friend who tutored me) said, “Yeah, yours was the only class she feared.” I told everyone I wouldn’t have graduated if he hadn’t been so nice to me.(He gave me lots of breaks because he knew about the disability.) He hugged me and said “That’s not true, Candy. YOU did the work. YOU earned it. It had nothing to do with me.” Everybody else smiled wanly, and I cried. Hey wow, positive attention! Maybe I’m NOT stupid and lazy! I had to be 32 years old to find that out, though, and it had to come from people I wasn’t related to.

While I occasionally get pissed-off phone calls and emails from readers, at least once a week I get a positive response to something I’ve written. My whole life, from 2nd or 3rd grade forward, I have gotten positive responses to my writing. It’s a strength of mine. It might be the only one I have, but it’s mine, and I’m good at it, and I know it, and I’m proud of it. And then there’s the comment my mother made while I was in college the first time. I forget what the subject matter was, but she ended with “You’re supposed to be such a damn good writer, prove it. You’re costing me a hell of a lot of money to find out.” Even my proven strength wasn’t proved to her. I placed somewhere in the top 3 in every writing contest I entered in high school, but she still doubted me, while complete strangers were affirming my ability.

I’m getting waaay off the subject here, but my point is, I take all the “good stuff” people have given me and place it side by side with the stuff I grew up with, and I can’t reconcile the two, or make them coexist. I know I’m not perfect, nor do I want to be, too much pressure – but lots of people seem to care about me, so I can’t be THAT evil – and yet, while I accept it when they tell me positive things, I don’t take them to heart and get them to rub out the crap instead.

Objectively, I think I’m OK. On a good day, anyway. I’ve made some mistakes, but I’ve also made some positive contributions to the world. The people I want most to see those positive contributions focus on the mistakes instead. The people who see the positive contributions and don’t know about the mistakes think I’m incredibly fabulous and wonderful. On the occasions that I confess a mistake to them, they don’t immediately assume I’m stupid and lazy and worthless and useless – they acknowledge what it must have been like for me and they don’t hate me for making it or feel let down because I did it.

I can acknowledge the good things I’ve done, though I think they’re few – but I can’t (yet) believe that on balance, I’m more “good” than “bad.” I don’t know who I’d be if I weren’t “bad.” I haven’t ever felt confident long enough to know what confidence really feels like on a regular basis. I haven’t ever felt loved enough to feel safe in knowing that I’m loved. I only get rewarded for certain things or actions, not just for being. I beat my brains out trying to please people and they’re never pleased enough. Just like those hurdles, it’s never enough, never enough. Maybe if I just do THIS I’ll be good. Maybe THAT will once and for all prove that I’m OK. So I do this, and I do that, and I still end up “bad.” I don’t think I can ever do enough to consider myself “good.” Good Me wouldn’t give a damn what people think, would learn internal validation instead of looking for it externally, wouldn’t take every cross word to heart and believe it deeply. Good Me would be able to tell people to go take a flying f*** at a rolling doughnut, as Vonnegut likes to say, and move on.

Of course, Good Me doesn’t exist. I can see some good, here and there, but I don’t think I’d know what to do with it if I were all good. If I were all good, I wouldn’t exist. I don’t know how to be all good, to see mostly light instead of mostly darkness. I’m scared as hell to leave the comfort of the darkness and admit that it’s not the whole truth, that while everyone has pockets of darkness, nobody is ALL dark. Except maybe me.

This made absolutely zero sense. Sorry. :\

Candy