I'm a smart person; I don't mean for that to be conceited, I just think empirically, most people would say that I was smart. I'm well-read, up-to-date on current events, and I like to imagine I can carry on an intelligent conversation with just about anyone. All these things beg the question: Why do I do the dumbest possible things at the worst possible times?
The timing aspect is not always necessarily true, but it brings to mind a story that was told many, many times in our family. When I was younger, my parents had a silver tray that rested on a mahogany structure with wheels on both sides. If you tipped it even the slightest, all manner of silver goblets would clang onto the floor as the cart (?) overturned. I was told countless times not to do this, not to touch it, because I did occasionally run into as children do. Then, as I began to realize how annoying it was and how much my parents truly didn't want me to knock it over, I started doing it out of pure spite. That may have been around the time they started the James Dobson series "How to Raise a Willful Child." I can't be sure.
I seem to have a self-sabotaging mechanism lodged in that part of my brain that also lets depression overtake me and doesn't give a time, because I'm too tired. I've only been in one truly wonderful relationship in my life (my soon-to-be-late marriage), and as much as I want to push all of the blame on my husband, and he does have his fair share, I'm almost more responsible for it. I have issues; really, I do. I don't wear a sheet and dance around with a plant on my head, but there are some days that sleeping for 19 hours makes me feel better than facing a new day. I haven't dealt with those issues properly, and my life is showing the repercussions.
I'm a great thinker; I feel like Dr. Seuss. I think so many grand things; I shall make them so! But, I don't. I give in to emotional exhaustion and try to get through another day, week, month. I am not a bad person; that's probably why I still do have the few people around me that care about me. However, I am a disappointing person. I have such potential and light and humor and intelligence in the right circumstances, and then the "fog" takes over. I could name the "fog" over the years: realizing depression, the breaking-off of an engagement, losing my grandfather, father, grandmother, the notion I might one day have a good relationship with my brother, my marriage, and my zeal for anything that disallows yoga pants. I don't want to be a blamer, I really don't. Nothing causes this but my own self-deprecation.
I imagined myself so differently at 36, and I'm trying so desperately to adjust the expectation. I have the worst coping skills since Sybil, and despite my smarty pants attitude, I do not know it all. I know less than 50%. I want to make a good life for myself, and I don't want to arbitrarily waste it. I don't know what the coming weeks, months, and years will bring, but I want to be a person you'd be proud to know, and a person on whom you can rely, and an example for my nieces, nephew, great-nephew, and children, should I be lucky enough to have them. I have been such a spoiled, entitled jerk for 36 years, and I don't want to do it any more. I want to be able to earn love and trust from everyone in my life, and I promise that I will do my best to achieve this. Feel free to call me out if I'm not living up to this deal.
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