Authentically Flawed

It’s the last day of 2021, which is both hard to believe and a welcome departure from…I don’t even know what to call this past year. (Temporarily) Unemployed, with the clock winding down, and barreling toward my 40th birthday I’ve had the opportunity to rest and reflect. It’s been an interesting year, and one in which I’ve been uncharacteristically less vocal (outside the office which is a whole other story). It’s not that I don’t have strong opinions about what’s going on in the world, because I do; for the first time since I started this blog, I just have’t felt safe sharing my perspectives. Instead, I’ve sat back and watched the world forget how to communicate. I don’t know if it was quarantine isolation, or the new doing-everything-from-home, or the ease of technology that made people sit behind their keyboards and craft, repost, and tag others in the most vitriolic and frankly ignorant content I’ve ever seen grace the internet. Whatever the cause, the effect has been to shrink away from the fray and mind my own business.

This self-censorship has caused me to examine why I’m so reluctant to engage, to throw my opinion out there for the masses to dissect and critique. After all, I have a passion for writing and that is part of the process right? Well, it comes down to my natural response to threat. You’ve heard of fight or flight but there are two other less common reactions: freeze and appease. I am solidly an appeaser; in dealing with conflict, I will do whatever I can to minimize confrontation. This stems from my childhood, the constant tension of which I can only describe as walking a tightrope. Over a deep body of water. And the water is on fire. Add being chased across the rope by a predator and that about sums up how I felt most of my adolescence. One wrong step and I’d be engulfed in the flames of my father’s outrageous tantrums, drowning in the need to protect my sister from both him and the gangs in our neighborhood. Move too slow and I’d be attacked by the shame of bad grades and failure (my junior high assistant principal made sure to keep this pressure on by telling me in 7th grade I’d never amount to anything).

I survived this by appeasing. I learned how to diffuse tense situations by doing whatever it took to minimize the confrontation. Throughout my adult life, I’ve vacillated back and forth between extreme fight response – ready to argue, debate, and in my early adulthood, physically fight, at the drop of a dime, and extreme appease response – yielding to the other party to avoid any tension. In my later adult life, I lean toward the latter especially with whom I have the closest relationships. I build up confrontation in my mind, manufacturing anxiety and stress, until the confrontation finally happens and I’m so overwhelmed that I typically end up in tears. And it’s almost never as bad as I make up in my mind, thus the release and subsequent sobbing are almost never warranted.

Compounding this is the fact that I’m a natural empath; it pains me to see others in pain or distress so I try to avoid it at all costs. This is why I love Christmas and other people’s birthdays. I love to dote on others and make them feel special but when it comes to planning anything for myself, rather then being exciting and fun, it’s overwhelming and uncomfortable. Will my friends get along? What if they don’t have fun? What if they think it’s boring? What if they don’t want to travel? What if they don’t have money to spend? What if they don’t like the food I picked? What if the music isn’t their preference? In every single event I’ve thrown for myself (and there have been very few for these reasons) I have spent the majority of the time worrying about others and not enjoying whatever it was I was supposed to be celebrating. If this sounds like a terrible way to live life, I can assure you – it’s less than ideal.

Why am I sharing this now? Because we are heading into a new year and while I’m not going to do the new year, new me thing, I have realized that I am too old and I have accomplished too much to drag the same habits into yet another year. I am who I am and I will always care deeply for others, but I am putting down the things I can’t own. Other people’s reactions to me and feelings, thoughts, plans. Apologies that aren’t mine to make. Yielding to the desires of others over my own. Tolerance for negativity, especially that which is directed at me or my beliefs.

A new chapter is upon us, fam. And while we can’t rewrite or undo what’s been done, we do have a blank page ahead. I intend to fill 2022 with an abundance of self love, to fill my cup before I attempt to pour into others, and to celebrate me comfortably and confidently because I deserve to love myself. I encourage you to do the same. 2022, let’s do this.