Lost
I am 100% lost today.
My apartment stinks like construction dust and smoke. My chest wall hurts. The heat is still pouring out of my radiators and it is a balmy 63 degrees outside. The house is a disaster. I ditched my Spanish class today and I'm just not prepared for the world. I'd love to disappear for a bit to get myself together, but I'd need more than 4 hours to do it right.
The boy and I have been struggling. I am comforted by the fact that all of his friends seem to be struggling, too. So it must be developmental and not necessarily bad parenting, right?
I know I am totally neurotic about this. Intellectually, I know that when others praise my parenting skills, my patience (no sniggering out there!) and my relationship with my son that no one is expecting me to be a perfect parent. No one. Except me. My biggest problem in life is that I expect way too much of myself. I expect me to always handle things gracefully and sensibly because I spent so many years screwing up that I should have learned from those years. I should have learned a lot from my terrible temper and my need to throw shoes, slam things, and just throw fits in general. I should be able to pass on that knowledge and should no longer succomb to my own deranged emotions. I should be able to juggle all of these emotional lives that have been left on my doorstep and no one should ever feel disregarded. I should be a genius at this by now! I should be something a little more than human.
I know that's bullshit, intellectually. But it is hard to stop the self punishing. It is totally unreasonable of me to expect myself to do all that I expect myself to do- much less to be "perfect" at it. It's a sick cycle. I handle something fairly well and someone tells me that I am so smart, talented, patient and good natured then I work really hard to stay that way. For a long, long time I was a wrathful, ornery, stubborn, venomous little thing. It surprises me to be described otherwise and I am absolutely desperate to keep it that way. Reasonable? Rational? Can you believe people have described me this way? Yesterday two people called me "perky". Well, what do you know? I usually laugh and tell them something like "You have no idea!" and I hope that I'll never be discovered. I hate the idea that I am a total fraud and some days it catches up with me.
The terrible thing about being a fraud is that, no matter how much anyone tells you how good you are you will never believe it. You'll always be afraid of that Mr. Hyde that lurks in the deepest, darkest recesses of your soul. I guess that is why I like to work on dark roles as an actor- so I can find a way to love my Mr. Hyde and give him an outlet that won't hurt anyone. I have always wanted to play Richard III. That would be quite cathartic for me.
Any of you who are concerned about the gender identification with my "evil" side can just suck it. You look at your evil side your way, and I'll look at mine my way. That's a bigger fish than I have room for in my skillet today.
So today I am going to putter around with some quiet pursuits and try to put my demons to rest. I will have to deal with the boy's tired rages this afternoon and I will need all the angels I can rally for the job.
My apartment stinks like construction dust and smoke. My chest wall hurts. The heat is still pouring out of my radiators and it is a balmy 63 degrees outside. The house is a disaster. I ditched my Spanish class today and I'm just not prepared for the world. I'd love to disappear for a bit to get myself together, but I'd need more than 4 hours to do it right.
The boy and I have been struggling. I am comforted by the fact that all of his friends seem to be struggling, too. So it must be developmental and not necessarily bad parenting, right?
I know I am totally neurotic about this. Intellectually, I know that when others praise my parenting skills, my patience (no sniggering out there!) and my relationship with my son that no one is expecting me to be a perfect parent. No one. Except me. My biggest problem in life is that I expect way too much of myself. I expect me to always handle things gracefully and sensibly because I spent so many years screwing up that I should have learned from those years. I should have learned a lot from my terrible temper and my need to throw shoes, slam things, and just throw fits in general. I should be able to pass on that knowledge and should no longer succomb to my own deranged emotions. I should be able to juggle all of these emotional lives that have been left on my doorstep and no one should ever feel disregarded. I should be a genius at this by now! I should be something a little more than human.
I know that's bullshit, intellectually. But it is hard to stop the self punishing. It is totally unreasonable of me to expect myself to do all that I expect myself to do- much less to be "perfect" at it. It's a sick cycle. I handle something fairly well and someone tells me that I am so smart, talented, patient and good natured then I work really hard to stay that way. For a long, long time I was a wrathful, ornery, stubborn, venomous little thing. It surprises me to be described otherwise and I am absolutely desperate to keep it that way. Reasonable? Rational? Can you believe people have described me this way? Yesterday two people called me "perky". Well, what do you know? I usually laugh and tell them something like "You have no idea!" and I hope that I'll never be discovered. I hate the idea that I am a total fraud and some days it catches up with me.
The terrible thing about being a fraud is that, no matter how much anyone tells you how good you are you will never believe it. You'll always be afraid of that Mr. Hyde that lurks in the deepest, darkest recesses of your soul. I guess that is why I like to work on dark roles as an actor- so I can find a way to love my Mr. Hyde and give him an outlet that won't hurt anyone. I have always wanted to play Richard III. That would be quite cathartic for me.
Any of you who are concerned about the gender identification with my "evil" side can just suck it. You look at your evil side your way, and I'll look at mine my way. That's a bigger fish than I have room for in my skillet today.
So today I am going to putter around with some quiet pursuits and try to put my demons to rest. I will have to deal with the boy's tired rages this afternoon and I will need all the angels I can rally for the job.
posted by Bree O'Connor at 11:02 AM
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