Saying what’s true, or rather working through what feels true to get to what is actually true, fucks me up sometimes. It actually fucks me up a lot of the time. I am working on getting comfortable with what is rather than my judgement (or the judgement of others) of what should be. Those thoughts, those feelings, rather than the actual thing itself will tug my heart, strain it to the point that my feels and my tear ducts try to take their turn.
I sat on the porch with myself for quite some time. He looked at me and said, “What’s wrong?”
I love that about him, by the way. Even when he is pretty sure he knows what my problem is (and he is almost always right), he never assumes. He doesn’t try to make me simple in his head so he can manage me. He doesn’t skip the part of the conversation where I have to own what I feel at least enough to say it out loud to him. He doesn’t save me from my fear that I will say something he will find distasteful. He doesn’t try to live for me in an attempt to make me comfortable for him. He insists that I do these things for myself. You wouldn’t think there was so much packed into asking a question you probably already know the answer to, but there is.
We talked for awhile about ancillary woes. He let me move through my process of getting to the thing. Finally, I didn’t look at him (of course, I’d like to tell you I looked square in his handsome face and declared my truth – that isn’t how it happened). “I think I might be a terrible person or at the very least, not a very good one. I don’t think I feel the way a normal person feels.”
And that’s it really. If you take 100 things I get twisted up in my brain about, I would bet at least 50% of them (modest guestimation as I don’t want to exaggerate and I certainly am not going to launch an inventory) pare down to “I think I might be a terrible person or, at the very least, not a very good one. I don’t think I feel the way a normal person feels.”
Here’s the funny thing – and seriously, I don’t care how this sounds – out of all the feels I catch, that one is probably the most ridiculous. Allow me to set down my loosely held humility card for a minute and be clear. If there is anything I know about myself unequivocally, it is that I am a good person.
Now, that isn’t to say I don’t have a good row with my share of selfishness, pettiness, judgement, and many other baser emotions. I absolutely do. I am human after all, and a flawed one at that. Catch me in a bad moment, push the wrong buttons, pull the wrong strings and I have been known to behave less than my raising. But, at my core, I am a good person. The idea that I could be labeled as otherwise is Ludacris (and my autocorrect totally just made that the rapper and not the word and for reasons that I just can’t pinpoint, I am not compelled to change it.)
All that being true, once again on my back porch, I battled with the idea that I was, in fact, a terrible person. And, because one of my greatest goals in life is to be great for him, I knew I had to get to the point where I said it out loud. Because here is another feel almost as ludicrous as the other; I am actually afraid he will agree with me. I am afraid I will say that I am feeling some less than emotion and he will either realize some inner truth about me and be disgusted, or seize the opportunity to finally tell me how he really feels. Either way, I am ruined.
Roll your eyes, I don’t give a shit. I would rather you roll your eyes at my absolute and acknowledged crazy than to go one more day pretending I have something together that I do not. I spent a lot of years that way. It turns that’s a real good way to turn fake crazy into real crazy. Yeah, I’m out.
Anyway, I looked him dead in the other direction and said “I think I might be a terrible person or at the very least, not a very good one. I don’t think I feel the way a normal person feels.”
I could feel him looking at me. I could feel him looking at me in such a way that said, “I am not going to stop looking at you until you look at this expression on my face.” This is a nonverbal conversation that happens between us regularly. But I wouldn’t turn. I was immensely engrossed in the leaf on the tree that was holding on to its branch as desperately as I was holding on to my courage. I hear him say, “look at me.” While you can ignore what might be a nonverbal feeling, an actual request requires acknowledgment. My head turn is met with a solid “bitchpleaseareyouseriousyougottobekiddingme” face.
Funny thing about that. I believe he is being completely honest with me. His complete and utter dismissal of my lack as a person takes every bit of fear I have in sharing this revelation and transforms it into a fierce defense of the feeling regardless of its validity. Yeah, he’s a saint.
“I am serious,” I insist. “A normal person wouldn’t feel this way. A normal person would not be okay. A normal person would feel something different. I think I am broken. I think there is something wrong with me.”
I was grateful when I saw his face change from the “maybe I can make her laugh at the ridiculousness” to the “okay, so we are doing this” look.
“I think that you are just stronger than most. You are able to do things that other people just aren’t built for. You are going to handle what needs to be handled. You always do. That doesn’t make you a terrible person. That makes you the best person I know.”
Okay, some intellectual honesty here. The quotes are used to designate mostly what he said. It’s edited to eliminate some name dropping, situation specifics, and other stuff that is important to us but not for public consumption and would just distract from the main point.
The main point is, by the way, I do forget who I am sometimes. Either due to the opinions of others or because of the Many in my own head. I don’t think I’m far off in my thinking that most of us do. Having a partner who is gifted in reminding you who are when you forget is a gift. Being able to hear it is a product of the work. Both together, well, that’s just worthy of next level gratitude.