My process for writing is simple: I procrastinate until an issue I care about and I, cross paths. Its freefall from then on, as I obsessively think about said subject. My obsessing over an issue is nothing short of a proper OCD that comes with marginal benefits and many downsides. I am a formidable and unrelenting analyst, but with Kylo-Ren levels of perfect procrastination.
My crowning glory is my lack of social skills, which are so pitiful that I make both of these desirable: Mike Pence as a first date and Zimbabwean hyper-inflation.
My OCD does not prevent me from having empathy for others – I have that in spades. I just don’t know how to express myself.
For example, a former classmate has a tough couple of years ahead, and a significant hurdle for him, may be an illness that he has to live with, forever.
I am sure I have written all the wrong things to him, but what I wanted to write was this: “Don’t die on me. Not until I can scathingly criticise your choice of old man shoes and unappreciation of £5 Tesco shirts and certainly not until I drink you under the table one last time. I am sad that this has happened to you, and not because you are the epitome of a human being (you are not), but because I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”
That’s it.
As I have the emotional bandwidth of a sprog, I have (repeatedly) written “thoughtful” and vacuous and superfluous words, which hide my sentiment. These verbs and nouns could fill a hot air balloon and existentially reflect my ego, which brings me to the crux of today’s blog.
My hard lessons of precarious/ temporary mental resilience
My underlying gut response to adversity has always been, “why me, oh God, why are you so unkind to me?” For a very long time, I have taken the sh*tstorm that life has thrown at me, as a personal insult to my being.
Yes, if Atlas and I were to compare sizes, my ego would win.
COVID-10, my family, friends, a professional coach and a mentor, all aligned this year to force me to start asking myself the right questions.
– If I were to die within the next five years, what would I want to have achieved?
– In the cold light of day, whom would I want to spend my finite energy and time on?
– The sh*tstorm inevitably comes for everyone. What resources do I have/need to deal with the sh*tstorm? How can I best utilise them?
My process starts with unlearning poor neural patterns, which starts with the why. Why do I have them in the first place?
Be rid of me, shame
If you are a man, trust me, you have no idea what “shame” is.
Women, on the other hand, know this feeling. We are persistently and consistently made to feel inadequate in (e.g.) our skin colour, shape, size, beauty and intelligence.
Personally, my abject failure to achieve societal standards of certain unnamed things has been a source of immeasurable shame for me for many years.
My attitude has been to deal with such failure by mimicking an ostrich and burying my head in sands of self-pity.
But unravelling this process has taught me two things:
– Fifty per cent of people I would ordinarily not interactive with are just not nice or well-meaning. Trust your judgment. Acknowledge your fear that these folk will sell your kidneys if they got half the chance. That is ok.
All, I need to do is control my interaction with them and my response to their deliberate manipulation, by recognising it for what it is.
– No-one makes me feel ashamed of myself, without my permission. Age, humility and experience lead me to believe this honestly: I am. And that is enough.
Every female, should have that etched into their psyche.
More later. Feedback is always welcome.