11:17 pm - Sat 5.22.2010
\"What's WRONG with that boy?\"

(This will be yet another in a series of "I had all day to do this, but waited till now" entries, so...well, that's about it.)

There's a trap I've fallen into all my life, and I really want to move past it - The trap of obsessing over "What's wrong with me?".

The idea that there's something seriously "wrong" with me is a pretty primal part of my psyche; it answered the (really) unanswerable question of why terrible shit happened to me as a child - "These things are happening because I'm bad, because I did something wrong".

Because I'm not a good, loveable person.

As I wrote that, it struck me how clearly it's the thought process of a child, and how I haven't been a child for quite some time now.

And yet that has been the driving force behind years of introspection/navel-gazing/whatever-you-want-to-call-it; I think, in my mind, I've had a drive to "solve the problem" of me, to figure out "What's wrong with me?" and fix it somehow.

Like I said, this isn't the first time this has crossed my mind, but I think the difference in the way I'm thinking about it now is that, in the past, I believe I honestly thought I was, not beating myself up, but "trying to be a better person" (I think I also thought, on some level, that "beating myself up" was what I deserved for not being "a better person").

But now? It's a dodge. Instead of getting on with the challenges that life presents me, I retreat into "What's wrong with me?"...because I can keep mucking about in that shit for years, and in a bizarre way, it's comfortable for me, certainly more comfortable than actually moving past beating myself for sins real and imagined, and doing the hard work of...well the hard work of doing hard work.

My childhood wasn't my fault. It's only taken me 40 years or so to figure that out, but I've finally caught on that I was basically "a victim of circumstance".

Beyond that, I need to get over whatever it is that I've been thinking all these years. I have to get past the idea that there's some Utopian/"alternate universe" version of me - "Perfect Jim" - that I can get to if I just think about it long enough, or beat myself up enough, or click my heels together three times and say "There's no place like home...".

I have to embrace the idea that I'm the person I am, I have the resources I have (Which in some areas, are considerable), and just get on with things.

I'm tempted to boil this down to "Less thinking. More doing", but I don't want to knock thinking - I have a big brain, and it likes to think stuff.

So let's say "More productive thinking...and more doing".

previous - next