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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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1:43 a.m. - 2014-01-14
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?" - Marianne Williamson My biggest, most persistent problem. Self-sabotage. I think about the times when I was actually bold enough to step out into my own light and how fiercely I was smacked down for it. I think about the din of my youth, a cacophony of naysayers. The father who pointed his shotgun at my four year-old face and declared he'd had enough of my show-offy shit after I happily burbled on and on at dinner about having make-up on and my picture taken at my first modeling gig. The howls of laughter in all the wrong places from the parents of my kiddie acting troupe staging the play I wrote and directed at age 7. The snarky catcalls that I must have cribbed it from something on The 4:30 Movie, certainly no kid could write such a thing! The way my 3rd grade classmates hissed and sneered and tried to beat me up on the playground when I was excused from the spelling test so I could take a quiz on the short story I'd read or do an algebra sheet as part of the work trucked over from the high school to keep me busy while the rest of the kids struggled with 'King on a Swing' and the multiplication tables. And, of course, my mother. She was always ready with the putdown, the mocking laugh, and/or a black eye and dislocated shoulder if I got biggity. Not wholly their doing, by age 9 or so I'd gotten plenty leery and ashamed of doing things better than others. Or busting out with some quirky creative thing. Or accepting notice or compliments for things I didn't think I'd 'earned'. By my early teens I was doing my best not to ever, ever, ever be exceptional in ANY way. And to be embarrassed when I couldn't help it, when I'd accidentally exceled. At 14 to be praised was to make me feel humiliated as though I'd crapped on the carpet like an un-housebroken dog. By my late teens I'd become adept at picking at things until they frayed, at procrastinating until it was too late, surpassing the pack at self-effacing humor and deliberately fucking up. It was so much safer. I'd learned to be my own worst enemy. That I was good at. Still am. I am the reigning champeen of denying myself success. I'm fucking awesome at backing down, giving up, and finding reasons not to do anything right. But my 51st birthday is next week and I've discovered something...I'm tired of letting myself down. If I have a fault besides the obvious ones, it's that I am wretchedly thin-skinned. I detest criticism. I flinch from mockery. I keen over cruelty lobbed my way. At least I try hard not to be a hypocrite. I know I can't take it so I work diligently not to dish it. But to step back out into my own light scares the shit out of me. I know it brings pain. I know it leaves me vulnerable. I know I'm hanging my ass out into the wind and fricken daring the world to take a swat at it. And I am not tough. Also? When the shitty remarks come my way I hurt over them because I secretly believe they're right. I am not talented or smart or pretty or worthy. I know I am not because I have already failed at my most essential task- mothering. THE one thing I'd planted my hopes on. I'd thought that by breaking the cycle of abuse and by giving it my best I'd get it right. Bwahahahahahaha! My elder son has left no doubt, no ambiguity, no shred of hope about my job as a mother. He's told me loud and long with his contemptuous words and then louder and longer with his silence that I suck. I was a shit mom. A screw-up, a complete failure. Score below zero. Whenever I think it's time to stop beating myself up and to let go and to step into my light and set the world on its ear with my terrific self I think of Alex. And how my best wasn't anywhere near good enough. If I messed it up with him when I truly believed I was doing okay- being funny and supportive and loving and teaching and encouraging and trying like hell to cram into him everything I knew and the lessons I'd learned from my failures so that by the time he left college he'd be light years ahead of where I'd been at his age...well, I was goddamn wrong, wasn't I? So here I am a scant week before my birthday exhausted by my constant self-sabotage and disappointment yet burdened with this horribly weighty peddler's pack on my back of my failure at the one goddamn thing I'd thought I was doing right.
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