We tell each other to create things, but then we judge each other for what we created and how we created it. The inner critic inside ourselves is the hardest to stop listening to, even though they are sometimes the quietest of all to speak. They also do the most damage.
and snakes and stones never broke my bones
Taylor Swift, You Need to Calm Down
It happens slowly over time, from the first time we are told to color inside the lines. Why do they stifle us at such a young age?
Our parents put these limitations on us, many times without even realizing it. They want to give us everything that they never had. They want us to have a good life, a future. These are all wonderful things to want for a child, but what about what the child wants? Or needs even?
I am not talking about basic human needs. I am talking about emotional attunement. Unknowingly, I think, parents push their own values onto their children. It’s true. I got a lot of things that my parents never had. There were also some needs that they didn’t meet. Maybe they didn’t know how. Maybe I didn’t know how to ask. I am not even sure if I do now, for that matter.
Words can hurt, especially from parents. They are godlike creatures to us when we are children. They are the people who are supposed to show us how to be in this world, but they are only still trying to figure it out for themselves. They fuck up sometimes. It still hurts. It still causes damage. It causes us to shrink into a lesser version of ourselves.
Curses
Do you remember when chain mail was a thing? “If you don’t send this to 10 people in the next 2 days, your pet will die,” or some such nonsense. I wonder if sometimes those people manifested their tragic fate by worrying it into existence.
Words can hurt when others use them, but they hurt the most when it comes from the self. Some people call it imposter syndrome. ‘What if I’m not good enough?’ ‘What if no one reads it?’ ‘What if no one understands?’ ‘What if no one cares?’ ‘What if…?’
I go through this a lot these days it seems. It’s scary to push through to the next level of who you are, the person that you want to be in this world. I remember crying in my therapist’s office one time saying that I didn’t want to be one of those people who lay on their death beds with a bunch of regrets. It’s still true.
Castes
What do you do? I hate that question, like my whole value as a human is determined by how I pay my bills. Working in the restaurant industry for as long as I have, I got used to having people look down their noses at me as though I were a peasant. Regretfully I have done the same to others.
The hard part for me is living my life, while simultaneously feeling like no on understands me. How do I get comfortable with that concept? I guess I am just tired of trying to explain myself to people.
The words I say get twisted. Judgement. Defensiveness. Nobody thinks what I think.
I want to belong, just like anyone else, to something. My path is not very clear and I am not entirely sure where I am going or how to get there. But this is the first time that something has felt truly right, at least for a long time.
Mad love, Jenna
