Disclaimer: In light of the response I got from my last, more-honest-than-usual post on perfectionism, I’m going to continue in a similar vein this evening. If you are only here for unadulterated positivity, teaching stories, or reading recommendations, I might suggest you skip this one. 🙂
Do you ever feel like you hover over the self-destruct button on your own life?
It constantly seems like my fingers are inches from pushing that button and bringing everything I’ve worked for down in one fiery crash. No? Just me? Okay then…
On the average day, I feel as if I am basically a professional self-saboteur. There is no one more practiced than me in the fine art of screwing myself over. I wish I was exaggerating, but this is simply what it is like to be 2 parts procrastinator, 4 parts perfectionist, 1 part anxious, and 3 parts uncertainty.
It almost seems comical when you try to picture it: a giant red “SELF DESTRUCT” button, flashing bright on an otherwise unremarkable grey surface. I see myself as through the eyes of a cartoonist: oversize pointer finger floating through the air, eyes popping freakishly out of my swollen, almost-bursting head. Those tiny tornadoes flying off my hair follicles…
(Am I the only one picturing Pinky and the Brain right now?)
Yeah, I think it’s probably a good thing I didn’t inherit any artistic talent. This is not a picture that you’d want to frame. Why do I bother trying to describe this?
Well, I think a lot about that feeling you get when you first become friends with someone. When you have that mutual moment of “No way, you do that too? I thought I was the only one!” connection. When you realize that you aren’t alone and that this person in some small way just totally gets you and is your type of person. That somehow you are kindred spirits or have souls made of the same stuff or whatever literary cliche you attach to the person you want to go out for drinks with on Friday nights instead of staying home alone on your couch. Friendship, right?
The problem is that these mutual moments of friendship-making don’t always come when we need them to. When everything is fear and uncertainty no matter where you look. When your daydreams have morphed into black and grey shadows that oscillate dully in your mind, and no palpable shapes emerge and no clear sounds are heard. When it’s time to say something but you don’t know how because no one else is going “No way, you too? I thought I was the only one.”
And I write this because speaking up feels like you might be pressing that self-destruct button. Like the moment you acknowledge the fears and the nightmares and the depression, you might have pushed down on that button until it was flush with the counter and there was no going back. And everything you’d worked for would come down in one. fiery. crash.
And if it feels like that for me, then maybe, just maybe, it feels like that for someone else too. And if I can be your “No way, you too? I thought I was the only one!” then I damn well will. Regardless of that self-destruct button. Regardless of what happens after that mutual moment of friendship. Because to realize that you aren’t on your own in a world as big as this one…that might be enough of a foundation to start rebuilding on once you’ve finished your self-destruct.
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