So what the hell is wrong with me?
I'm not even joking a little...this is the story of my life.
So on some reflection last night it occurred to me that I am consistently dumped/passed over for the women who all have angst, issue, and emo in their wake. Perhaps this says something about me.
This isn't a Patric thing either. The relationship I had before that did it too. Now, I will say my limited high school experiences didn't, but a lot of that was because it was high school, I surmise, either there was a lot of variety or we were all insane, I don't know. But it's disturbing and downright angst inducing to realize this.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, (who I am reading), and my old roommate Faith, both reminded me that we should not base our perceptions on how others see us, but how God sees us. After all he sent his Son to redeem us. And as a Christian I know intellectually that is true. Whatever faith you are, we can all agree we can't base our self-perception on how others see us. But let's face it, we do. And while intellectually I know that I can't base how I see myself on the actions of others, that is the only base I have to go on. God may think I'm worthy, and that's great and all, but why doesn't anyone else?
That's what therapy is digging at right now, why don't I think I'm worthy and why the hell I assume everyone else thinks that. Well there's a big reason that I assume everyone else thinks that, because at the end of the day people prove my supposition right. I may not be a terribly logical person, but I do get a+b=c, and so when those patterns fall time and time again, I assume that this is a constant. No matter how wonderful people think I am, I am not a person who is good enough for them, but this other person who causes nothing but angst is good enough for the. Thus being nice and wonderful means that you are assed out.
Now, I know that isn't the way that the world works. I know that not everything is about a+b=c every since time, (cause hell, it may equal y, I fucking hate math). I know that this is so much more complicated that me. It's about the other person, about their weirdness, about all these other factors. I know that. But it isn't how my brain processes this. My brain always, always, always assumes that you don't want to be my friend because there is something wrong with me.
Perhaps it was my childhood of being picked on, (oh of it is that prosaic, I will hit something). Perhaps it was the flakiness of people I knew in my youth. Perhaps it was my family, I have no clue why this is in my head. For all I know it could be my crazy grandmother. There is the belief that I am a horribly flawed person that no one can like or care for because if you did, you wouldn't want these people in your life who are worse.
The more I think about it, the more I send suspicious looks at my mother...I can't blame her for EVERYTHING, but you know...the more I think about it...
In all fairness, I felt this way before my mother took the big crazy, I think she certainly exacerbated it to the levels I'm at now. That was the spiraling point for a lot of my issues I'm dealing with now, but really many existed before her but were just kept very in check. It could have been slight things, a friend who rejected me, my first serious relationship as a teen, (who broke my tender, 16-year-old heart), the not-so-tender ministrations of my wonderful classmates growing up. It could be all of those things combined, and likely is. With every rejection I assumed that it was because it had to do with me, and it reflected on me. I couldn't be a worthy person, because these people found me unworthy.
Come to think of it, I think this speaks a lot to my family too. I crave their approval constantly, because I feel that without it I'm less than. I can have all the degrees in the world, I can have all the success in the world, but if I don't have my family's tacit approval and praise it never feels enough. I feel without it, I am a failure in some capacity.
WHY THE HELL DID THESE ISSUES EVEN COME UP?
See, this is the frustration for me at the moment, because it makes no sense why I feel these things. Okay, feeling like crap about being overlooked for crazy girls that does makes sense why I would feel like crap, but the rest...I don't get it. Because these feelings existed before there was ever a Brian, Jason, or Patric in my life. They are only making an already existing situation worse.
I can't figure out how to get at the root of the problem though, and that's the aggravating part. Saying that I should look at myself as God looks at me isn't enough, because that is an intellectual exercise for me, not an emotional. And that's what is at the problem here. I've so divorced the intellectual from the emotional I can't get the two to connect. You can tell me I'm pretty, wonderful, and amazing till the cows come home, but because I've been rejected so many times, I can't emotionally believe you. Intellectually I can recognize that. Emotionally I refuse to because I believe that people are liars. They tell you things to make themselves feel better, but don't really mean it, else they wouldn't hurt me the way they do.
It's a very primal reaction, perhaps childlike, but perhaps that part of me is still a child. It's that part of me that got kicked out of the cool circle of people as a kid and was told that I wasn't good enough, the part of me that has believed it ever since. Now I have to figure out how to get around that and stop believing the hurt little girl, and start believing the intellectual young woman.
One of those situations when you wish you could just get a pill for that.
So on some reflection last night it occurred to me that I am consistently dumped/passed over for the women who all have angst, issue, and emo in their wake. Perhaps this says something about me.
This isn't a Patric thing either. The relationship I had before that did it too. Now, I will say my limited high school experiences didn't, but a lot of that was because it was high school, I surmise, either there was a lot of variety or we were all insane, I don't know. But it's disturbing and downright angst inducing to realize this.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, (who I am reading), and my old roommate Faith, both reminded me that we should not base our perceptions on how others see us, but how God sees us. After all he sent his Son to redeem us. And as a Christian I know intellectually that is true. Whatever faith you are, we can all agree we can't base our self-perception on how others see us. But let's face it, we do. And while intellectually I know that I can't base how I see myself on the actions of others, that is the only base I have to go on. God may think I'm worthy, and that's great and all, but why doesn't anyone else?
That's what therapy is digging at right now, why don't I think I'm worthy and why the hell I assume everyone else thinks that. Well there's a big reason that I assume everyone else thinks that, because at the end of the day people prove my supposition right. I may not be a terribly logical person, but I do get a+b=c, and so when those patterns fall time and time again, I assume that this is a constant. No matter how wonderful people think I am, I am not a person who is good enough for them, but this other person who causes nothing but angst is good enough for the. Thus being nice and wonderful means that you are assed out.
Now, I know that isn't the way that the world works. I know that not everything is about a+b=c every since time, (cause hell, it may equal y, I fucking hate math). I know that this is so much more complicated that me. It's about the other person, about their weirdness, about all these other factors. I know that. But it isn't how my brain processes this. My brain always, always, always assumes that you don't want to be my friend because there is something wrong with me.
Perhaps it was my childhood of being picked on, (oh of it is that prosaic, I will hit something). Perhaps it was the flakiness of people I knew in my youth. Perhaps it was my family, I have no clue why this is in my head. For all I know it could be my crazy grandmother. There is the belief that I am a horribly flawed person that no one can like or care for because if you did, you wouldn't want these people in your life who are worse.
The more I think about it, the more I send suspicious looks at my mother...I can't blame her for EVERYTHING, but you know...the more I think about it...
In all fairness, I felt this way before my mother took the big crazy, I think she certainly exacerbated it to the levels I'm at now. That was the spiraling point for a lot of my issues I'm dealing with now, but really many existed before her but were just kept very in check. It could have been slight things, a friend who rejected me, my first serious relationship as a teen, (who broke my tender, 16-year-old heart), the not-so-tender ministrations of my wonderful classmates growing up. It could be all of those things combined, and likely is. With every rejection I assumed that it was because it had to do with me, and it reflected on me. I couldn't be a worthy person, because these people found me unworthy.
Come to think of it, I think this speaks a lot to my family too. I crave their approval constantly, because I feel that without it I'm less than. I can have all the degrees in the world, I can have all the success in the world, but if I don't have my family's tacit approval and praise it never feels enough. I feel without it, I am a failure in some capacity.
WHY THE HELL DID THESE ISSUES EVEN COME UP?
See, this is the frustration for me at the moment, because it makes no sense why I feel these things. Okay, feeling like crap about being overlooked for crazy girls that does makes sense why I would feel like crap, but the rest...I don't get it. Because these feelings existed before there was ever a Brian, Jason, or Patric in my life. They are only making an already existing situation worse.
I can't figure out how to get at the root of the problem though, and that's the aggravating part. Saying that I should look at myself as God looks at me isn't enough, because that is an intellectual exercise for me, not an emotional. And that's what is at the problem here. I've so divorced the intellectual from the emotional I can't get the two to connect. You can tell me I'm pretty, wonderful, and amazing till the cows come home, but because I've been rejected so many times, I can't emotionally believe you. Intellectually I can recognize that. Emotionally I refuse to because I believe that people are liars. They tell you things to make themselves feel better, but don't really mean it, else they wouldn't hurt me the way they do.
It's a very primal reaction, perhaps childlike, but perhaps that part of me is still a child. It's that part of me that got kicked out of the cool circle of people as a kid and was told that I wasn't good enough, the part of me that has believed it ever since. Now I have to figure out how to get around that and stop believing the hurt little girl, and start believing the intellectual young woman.
One of those situations when you wish you could just get a pill for that.