(no subject)

[moominmolly]

So, I saw people linking to this essay on Single Dad Laughing about bullying, Memoirs of a Bullied Kid. Which led me to You just broke your child. Congratulations., which in turn led me to this post, which is the point of MY post: The Disease Called "Perfection".

His basic idea is that when nobody is willing to talk about the things that are hard in their lives, we all suffer, because we believe everybody else has it made -- they never feel self-loathing, they never fail to do the dishes three days in a row, they never feel lonely or fucked-up or inadequate. And so we don't want to admit to being the only weak person, the only one struggling, which, in turn, just makes the struggle harder.

This feels simultaneously so true and so hard for me. I often choose to think about the good things in my life and focus on those. I usually only post here to be silly or share interesting things; my deepest and hardest trials almost never show up. I'm sure this makes me look a lot more stable and sane than I really am. But part of it is an act of willpower, too: isn't it better to focus on the awesome things, and live in those? I don't ignore the difficult parts of my life, but nor do I dissect them in public. Isn't that good?

Well -- maybe it is. But maybe it only is up to a certain point.

In that post and its followup, Single Dad Laughing encourages people to bring up their difficult and messy parts. I'd like to do this: post some stuff I'm ashamed of in myself, or things I hate, or just... maybe, things you didn't know were messed up inside me but really, they really are. If you feel up to it, post one or two yourself, either anonymously or with your name attached. Maybe he's right - maybe we will all feel less alone.

• I'm in more casual debt than I'd care to admit to. I used to be extremely good with money, but when we had Natalie, somehow I stopped keeping track as well as I used to. I'm being careful again now, but I am spending a LOT of time, money, and energy crawling out of a hole I am ashamed to have gotten myself into.
  
  
• Like many people I know, I loathed middle school. But I wasn't the bottom rung on the ladder - sure, I was a total outcast, and sure, one day all of my best friends decided to hate me, but somehow that didn't stop me from laughing at the tiered leather skirt that Valerie Palmer proudly wore on the first day of eighth grade, which I never saw again because I'm pretty sure she left school crying that day. I hope to god I don't ever do that as a grownup.
  
  
• I sometimes raise my voice in anger at my kid. Not a lot. But... I always try to calm down and talk about it later, and apologize for being out of line, but still: I YELL AT MY KID. Every time I do it, I'm pretty sure it's the worst thing I've ever done.
  
  
• Sometimes I can't stand being ON. I enjoy being a dynamic person, but sometimes I just can't face the idea of getting up the energy to be me, so I lie in bed and feel bad about that. Then I get grouchy and snappy. Sometimes I just sit and do nothing at all, rather than enter a social situation - sit in my car, sit in my bedroom, just sit and wait.
  
  
• I probably envy more of you folks than you know, for tiny things or huge things, for contradictory things.

There. I know those aren't actually deep dark secrets, but each of those things is something I've actively suppressed posting about in the past few weeks because it might look bad, or give people the wrong impression about me somehow. I'm generally pretty positive and happy about myself and my life, but I also spend time feeling crappy and disliking myself for one reason or another.

But, actually, writing them down felt good. There it is: I'm not perfect. I'm pretty up front about some of the ways I'm imperfect (I'm flaky, I'm messy, I'm impossible to schedule with), but I don't spend a lot of time talking about how hard it is to put away my clothes or how sometimes I have angry flashes of self-loathing when my pants don't button or my belly pooches out over the top. Or how some days, I love my kid but I just don't want to be a parent that day, at all.

I love the world, and I love all of you in it, my crazy friends, in all your glorious imperfections. Seeing the things people have dealt with in their lives, the things they still deal with every day - I am in awe of you. I am also impressed by every single one of you (and there are many) who are able to live their trials and hardships out loud. Thank you for sharing them with me. Every one makes it easier for me to live in this world as the flawed, imperfect human that I am.

Comments

[rosefox]

His basic idea is that when nobody is willing to talk about the things that are hard in their lives, we all suffer, because we believe everybody else has it made -- they never feel self-loathing, they never fail to do the dishes three days in a row, they never feel lonely or fucked-up or inadequate. And so we don't want to admit to being the only weak person, the only one struggling, which, in turn, just makes the struggle harder.

Ha, I am far too critical of other people to ever have this problem. I still get embarrassed when I don't meet my own standards, but it has very little to do with thinking other people are immaculate and I am the only one besmirched.

I think most of my LJ is an answer to your request; I write relentlessly about my imperfections because I hate the idea of anyone else seeing me as perfect.

[arachne8x.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing this. I haven't finished my post about the Perfection piece, but I've been thinking about it for days.

*hugs* You make it easier for us to live down our imperfections too.

[metagnat.livejournal.com]

I find sharing my negative stuff with other people both really difficult and impossible to avoid.

I mean, sometimes it spills over, but I am always certain that I'm bothering people; that no one is interested. I have been depressed and overwhelmed in a very specific way for weeks but I haven't been writing about it (or talking about it, in fact, I've been avoiding my friends) because I'm certain I will bore people.

I feel like I only get so much forbearance. And, once I use that up with people, it's gone. It might not be true, and even if true, it probably re-sets, but that feeling is always in the back of my head when I talk about my own negative emotions or other shortcomings.

Even if I'm not boring them, I worry they just won't care.

Right now, I have seldom, if ever, so longed for a sanctuary away from people. And I can't even afford to get out of the city at all, let alone to somewhere I can be alone for a while.

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes I don't brush my teeth or feed my cat until late afternoon.

Also, sometimes when I'm stressed out I like to go to sleep with the light on. It's bad for me - I wake up at three am with my eyes all bloodshot, and then can't back to sleep - but weirdly comforting.

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

And so we don't want to admit to being the only weak person, the only one struggling, which, in turn, just makes the struggle harder.
Hey! I resemble that remark!

Er... and other people seem to have Real Problems, which make mine just seem petty.

[fraterrisus]

I have the worst bouts of nonproductivity ever. It leads to a really vicious case of Impostor Syndrome that I'm pretty sure resulted in me losing my last professional job before I went back to grad school. The fact that happened at all (and I generally pass it off by saying that I was having some pretty serious psychological problems at the time) is probably one of my nastier secrets that I don't like to tell.

When I say "worst ever": You know how, during the course of a work day, everybody spends some time just reading Facebook, playing stupid games online, catching up on blogs, etc? You ever have a day where you literally get zero work done for your paying job, even though you spent 8 hours sitting at your desk? Yeah, I have at least one day like that every week.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

*hug* Thanks for sharing those. You are still stunningly awesome.

A former friend told me awhile back that I'm too negative and everybody hates me for it, so I've been trying to share my own challenges LESS than before.

[veek.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you for this. I might have to do one of my own -- if nothing else, then because the mere thought gets angry NO replies from somewhere inside me. (Wait 'til I'm less fucked up than right this moment, wait 'til I can find better words, wait wait wait.)

For what it's worth: the reluctance to share the negative is very much cultural. You'll be shocked, I'm sure, to hear that Russians are pretty much the opposite on this. And we can't be the only ones. Sharing one's troubles is a sign of trust and friendship, and of willingness to rely on the other person, and trust that that's ok, and that someday they'll be willing to rely on you.

This right here is why it took me the better part of a decade to stop feeling that Americans don't have [what I would consider] significant friendships with anyone.

[dot_fennel]

I still regularly pay bills months late. My landlord threatened me with eviction a year or two ago because it was the end of the month and I just... hadn't... gotten around to mailing rent.

But I'm having a lot of trouble thinking of flaws that I don't already assume people ascribe to me. This may be a total lack of self-knowledge.

I used to joke about how bad I was at my (previous) job, but seriously, I think I was really bad. I am not somebody you want monitoring your backup server, or watering your plants, or anything else that has to be done every single day and yet doesn't immediately look like a problem when it's neglected (until suddenly it is).

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I started work on my Perfection Confessional, then realized I had the wrong idea.

I wrote a lot and came close to crying a couple times. Then I realized I was not putting my imperfections on the line. I had simply tried to explain why I have certain imperfections without enumerating them.

Then I felt tremendous guilt and wanted to hide. Hooray neuroses!

[blk]

I have impostor syndrome not just about my day job but about myself as a parent. I love my children, but I don't spend enough quality time with them. I don't give them enough affection, enough attention, enough patience. I feel relieved instead of sad when they are at their dad's house for a week and I can be "off." I don't take enough pictures of them. I don't miss them when they go away on short vacations. I am jealous of you and other friends who seemingly can find parenting rewarding and joyful day after day, who have wonderful, creative, empathic, securely-attached, responsible kids because they've been raised by Real Parents.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Perhaps its a fault of mine, but I'm going to dwell on the things that aren't perfect in my life instead of so much on my own personal faults. So here are things that are hard:

I've always wanted to have kids, maybe not right then but certainly it was always in my plan. For the longest time I didn't have the right guy, or I wasn't in the right place. Now that it is as good as it's going to get I've officially crossed over into what OB/GYNs call "advanced maternal age". Top that with the fact that my personal women's health stuff has always been wonky and I wonder if I ever will have kids. I'm waiting and waiting and I'm just impatient.

I'm going into a massive amount of debt. Med school costs about $50 grand a year and my school doesn't have a hell of a lot of financial aid. And I don't have rich doctor parents. Somehow six years of work in public health left me with an okay 401k but not an ounce of savings to put towards grad school or a house. I hope I haven't mortgaged myself and my hubbie for nothing, but it'll be a long time before I see any fruits to these labors.

As much as I love living, sharing life with my hubbie, singing, hosting events, I wonder sometimes if I will be a bad doctor because I'm not studying enough. My future patients deserve better.

I've finally joined the slackertude of my family wrt birthdays. As the last child, everyone else moved on long ago and either have their own kids, stopped coming to holidays, or stopped giving presents. This year for the first time I finally stopped giving presents too. That sucks.

These are a few of the ways in which my life doth not rock.

[gretchens.livejournal.com]

I spend *way* too much time on the internet, and not nearly enough time on cleaning my house. Like, right now? There are dishes to be done, laundry to be done, kid junk to be tidied, aaaaand, I'm on my laptop. It is a double edged sword that my career depends on the internet -- going off to work in an internet-less place is just not an option. When I was finishing my last grad school projects, I actually sought out places withOUT wifi to just get that shit DONE. Irony being, of course, that it was all about technology's impact on community. I would love to make a no internet at home rule, but, it just doesn't work out. It's the main reason I want a desktop (my first ever, in 18 years of computing) in our next computer -- I hope that having an iMac in the guest room would help with the issue... but I have to get that room in order (we switched guest and kids room in... july, and the guest room is still a disaster) to even contemplate it and, o hai, I'm on the internet whining about it.

I will say that the cleaning person was GREAT and I am just so sad she went back to school. I've just been too... whatever.... to start the hunt for a new one. At least when she was coming, every week the house was presentable for a little while...

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

I'm shit at making and maintaining friendships. It's something I never figured out as a child and have been clueless about ever since. Every close friend I've had in my life has been someone who pursued me relentlessly -- who wouldn't let me *not* be their friend. I'm worried that I don't even have the capacity to be a good friend.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

and strangely enough, that makes me like you more.

one in return -- i envied you for years. i'm not sure when i stopped, probably around the time you had natalie.

[spike.livejournal.com]

Thank you for admitting and writing down and sharing genuinely hard things to share.

Sharing our imperfections so openly and so honestly has been one of our most powerful and positive connections, and has helped me deal with mine better.

*thinking*
Should make this a viral/meme thing somehow. "I'm FAR from perfect: [write three things]" or something.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

::nod::

In that post and its followup, Single Dad Laughing encourages people to bring up their difficult and messy parts. I'd like to do this: post some stuff I'm ashamed of in myself, or things I hate, or just... maybe, things you didn't know were messed up inside me but really, they really are. If you feel up to it, post one or two yourself, either anonymously or with your name attached. Maybe he's right - maybe we will all feel less alone.

::nod:: I know I have a list of inner stuff that isn't so shiny. Time to write it out.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

I think you're awesome. And if part of what makes you you is that you don't live your life by oversharing, that is okay too.

Frankly, it gives me hope to think that there are people out there who have it together.

[ceelove.livejournal.com]

I'm much better about it than I used to be, but I've battled a sugar addiction my whole life. These days, it's down to a mechanism for stress management, which also means it's kind of a useful barometer. If you see me at a party and I'm eating sugar, it likely means I'm bored, lonely, and/or shy, and wish to god someone would talk about something interesting with me.

When I said to my favorite aunt that our family has a history of mental illness, she responded that it also has a history of authoritarian parenting. I watch the tendency in myself, and when I'm tired, overwhelmed, overfull of my child - yep, it comes out. I just knee-jerk tell her what to do, won't stop to take her perspective into account... and I imagine she just loses that piece of possibility, with no hope of getting it back. (Which is why I surround myself and her with people of other perspectives.)


When I get lost, I basically freak out. No one should ever have to be around me when I'm lost. Generally there's screaming and crying, and sometimes trying to break things in fury.

I am uncomfortable with people of intellect significantly lower than mine. I feel elitist and snobby about it, even though I don't experience it as being judgmental so much as awkward, fish-out-of-water. These days, I feel somewhat buffered by my large and intelligent community, but I certainly didn't have that before coming to Boston.

There. Maybe that will help dispel the impression of me as having it intimidatingly well together.

[ceo]

I'm terrible at making friends with people, particularly men. There's a step from "friend" to "close friend" that I have absolutely no idea how to make. It's putting myself out there for rejection in a way that is actually more terrifying than asking someone out.

I also suck at expressing what I need or want. I've gotten a lot better at this than I used to be, but it still drives gosling nuts occasionally.

<we pause now while I check that my manager is not on your flist, nor you on his>

I've also gotten a lot better at productivity and time management than I once was, but I still have the occasional day when I don't feel I quite earned my salary. And I still have Impostor Syndrome in a big way, which is partly due to being somewhat self-taught in my profession.

[diatom.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. I'm having a curmudgeon phase. I have overshared on lj, and overdished / oversniped. LJ is sometimes my vomitbox. Admitting that is not a shiny moment, but it lets me vent, and lets me also take a step back and add in positivity, when I start suspecting I've gone too far into the black hole.

Thanking one's friends is important. I'm getting better at that. And, I do appreciate the positivity your posts so often have.

Lately, I've been a bit down on right-brain folks that have a personal spirituality. I'm a bit ashamed of myself, since that's my own background as well, but it's a kind of criticism I need to let loose sometimes, to shake things up, and keep from blind stagnation. Hopefully I figure out where I stand, when the shaking stops.