Day 11 of the Write31Days Challenge
It's okay to realize
you're crazy and very damaged
because all the best people are.
- Anne Lamott
Has anyone else shown up to their life year after year, waiting for that elusive time when you’ll finally feel like you’re functioning like you’re supposed to? Just me?
In particular, I’ve been waiting for that day when I don’t bounce back and forth between feeling very sane and functional and then swinging back the other way to feeling totally incapacitated by all my big feelings and hang-ups. I’ve been surprised over and over again to realize that I’m still aching from the wounds of 3rd grade. I thought we were supposed to just be resilient and brush it off? After all “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”….right?
Wrong. So very wrong.
The damage and craziness so often come from words. It seems like we as a society are finally starting to realize this in the way we treat and raise our children, with great care put into building positive self-image and speaking kindness. But in the same breath with which we praise our children, we hop on Twitter or Facebook and use our fingers to sling words at other people that are laced with hate, anger, judgment, and vitriol.
(photo by Brad Stallcup at StockSnap.io)
So these words, they shape us. And as we go on in our lives, our internal dialogue rambling on out of control, we can begin to believe that we are too dysfunctional to be of much use.
And believe it or not, it’s when we discover that we aren’t all that capable that we are most primed to be useful. When we aren’t blinded by the illusions of our own awesomeness, we can stop showing off for everyone and actually have the humility to care about others. Of course, since we are all crazy and damaged, we will revert back to pretending to be awesome next week, and then wonder why we ever felt so broken down just a few days prior. We will assure ourselves that the awesomeness will last this time…until it doesn’t.
Take parenting for example. If there’s ANYTHING that can make me feel like I need a one-way ticket to the asylum, it’s parenting. I can go from a sweet, well-intentioned mom to a screaming, fire-breathing Hulk in the span of 2 minutes. And then I wonder “what in the heck just happened???” The guilt and shame quickly follow, and my veneer of awesome mom is stripped away and I’m back to being broken and humble and looking for help. I’m looking for wisdom outside of myself, and begging God to PLEASE put a buffer around my kids’ hearts so that they don’t inherit my brand of crazy.
But here’s the thing about damaged, crazy people. They are very often aware that they aren’t quite perfect. And guess what? We are all very damaged and somewhat crazy. In some way, shape, or form, we’ve lived through enough years on this broken, spinning orb to collect scars. Those scars impact how we live. Even if you externally hide your crazy, it’s there.
(Photo by Steve Halama at StockSnap.io)
So since we are all very damaged and crazy, we have 2 options: We can either realize it or suppress it. We can realize it and, in humility seek wisdom and healing, or we can suppress it until it roars to the surface when we least expect it. Realizing it and dealing with it takes courage. Sometimes it takes counseling (I’m a HUGE proponent of counseling!), but every time it takes courage. We’ve been trained to perform, to achieve, and to never stop chasing perfection. How on earth can we pause to dive into our inner turmoil if we are supposed to be doing all those things? We can’t. So that’s where the courage comes in. The courage to say “I’m not okay.” “No I can’t take that commitment because I don’t have the bandwidth for it” (the world will survive if we don’t bake all the things for school. Actually scratch that, because of food allergies you can’t actually bake anything for school, but YOU GET MY DRIFT). There is courage in calling the doctor because you’re battling mental handicaps that no amount of prayer, meditation, or white-space is fixing. Medication may be needed to get stable enough in order to get after the hard work of healing. There’s courage in being honest when someone asks how you’re doing. “Yeah I’m actually crumbling right now and I could really use someone to take my 3 year old so I can be alone for a couple of hours” is a brave ask.
I’m trying to be more brave. I’m trying to let go of that notion of earlier adulthood that I was supposed to get it together. The together people are as elusive as unicorns, so I’m joining the rest of the world’s good company in admitting that I’m both very damaged and crazy. It’s not lonely here. The more I confess my struggles, the deeper the relationships go. I love the idea of a life surrounded by people without pretense.
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