been thinking about my last post and the issues raised and it's become abundantly clear i'm missing the point. this isn't about my desires and the apparent conflict between them. this is all about my uneasy relationship with expectations and guilt. this is an ongoing battle, one i've fought for far too long, one i can't seem to overcome.
so why do i feel so guilty all the time? part of it is my perfectionistic tendencies - the desire to always do what is expected and to do it perfectly. intellectually, i know this is impossible. yet i still react emotionally in many situations, especially when my emotional energy is at low ebb. i remember feeling like i never quite measured up, that no matter what i did, i would always fall just a bit short of what was expected - whether those expectations came from outside myself or whether they were invented in my own head.
and i tend to set my own bar quite high.
case in point: last night i was talking to candice about some of this and i mentioned feeling selfish and she said she couldn't imagine me being selfish. i laughed and said she had no idea, but she said, "don't you think i would have pointed it out if i thought you were? as i know you'd do for me?" and i had no response. somehow i've confused having desires with being selfish. the unfortunate corollary to this is i've mistaken denial of these desires for following Christ, which is not what He had in mind. yes, we are exhorted to die to ourselves, but that doesn't mean we kill ourselves, constantly tearing ourselves down. we don't show love to others by hating ourselves.
and i know this, but i don't always let that knowledge affect how i deal with issues. and i have no doubt someday, i will again come here and spew here again. i pray for your patience. sometimes it helps just to get it out. sometimes it helps to have others remind me what truly is important and that my life isn't nearly as distorted as these lenses i wear make it appear.
thanks again to all those who responded, here or in another form. great to know i have friends, even though i don't deserve them.... :)
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Tunes: patty griffin - goodbye
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2 comments:
Hi Thurman. Really interested in your inner dialogue and external admissions... your final words, "even though I don't deserve them..." followed by the smiley face... to me it still sounds like self-depracating humor. Which isn't really humor. It's actually insidious negative self-talk. If you're gonna face this guilt thing and learn selfishness is okay (which it is, and I want to smack every person who says it isn't with a get-happy-and-get-real-paddle), you've got to reprogram the voices in your head. Now, sure, I know you well enough to see you smiling when you wrote those words, and I understand your tongue-in-cheekiness... I'm of the school, though, which believes people don't say things--even under the guise of jest--unless they mean them.
Do you think that introverts tend to have a distorted self images because they lack many of the human interactions which give them a better mirror of who they really are?
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