Overseer

Have you ever wondered why something is cool? I hadn't thought much about it either. At least not until I read stuff by other people exploring the idea of what makes something cool. What started as a little thought game (my favorite way to disconnect from the mundane moments of living) has me thinking about why I've never thought of myself as cool. Well, it's really more about why I've never really thought that I even had the capacity to be cool. Which makes me wonder if I've ever really looked at myself in a largely objective and non-judgmental way. 

I look at the way I have treated my wife over the last few years. All the times that I trampled and stomped on her needs to pursue some vague notion of what I should be rather than just living with the way that I am. It's like I have this insidious internal overseer who makes sure that I don't get any ideas about leaving my assigned station. He's tasked with making sure that I stick to the script and don't try to convince myself that the image of the goofy, socially awkward, and undeserving bumbler may not be an accurate reflection of how other people experience me. 

I've accepted an image of who I am that undermines the most important relationships in my life. The social leper must always hide. People would never want to be with you the way you are so you can never let them know what you're thinking or feeling. You'll be ridiculed if you ever let the real you emerge. Keep that under wraps. Live in fear. I can't recall ever thinking these words explicitly. They're representations of a cluster of feelings and reactions. I look at how hard I worked to find out where people thought I should go and how eagerly I've scrambled to get into that place. School. Work. Success will never come unless I continue to push and strive to be more than I am now. Salvation lies out there somewhere. Who you are at this moment is never enough. But maybe things will be different in the future. 

I've given other people the power to make me feel good about myself. The more distant that person is from me, the better I would feel when they granted me their acceptance. They accepted the finely crafted and carefully honed version of me, the version of me that I built up over years of earning distinctions. I could hide behind distinctions. I wouldn't have to rely on anything personal. I've told myself that my success has been built on those distinctions. My failures are the result of my inherent insufficiency. All the proof that I need to confirm the influence of this inherent insufficiency on my engagement with the core of living, relationships, is my internal reaction to my wife's plea for affection. How can you expect me to give you something that I am incapable of offering? That was what I would hear in my head when she told me that she wanted to feel desired. I felt in my deepest depths that I was incapable of giving her that affection.

That's obviously not true. What I thought was my deepest depths were just fears and insecurities that were instilled in me years ago. I'm angry that I was made to feel that way about myself, but when I look at how the people who formed my world when I was so young feel about themselves and their place in the world, I realize that there was really no other way for me to view the world. I should be more angry at myself for passively sitting by and continually buying into this notion of who I am. The crazy thing is that I was given constant signals that other people did not experience me in the way that I thought they did. My overseer did a fantastic job of keeping me in line. The little fucker...