My beautiful wife came to visit recently. I love her visits; they always leave me feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the remainder of my time here. Unfortunately, they often have the opposite impact on her, yet she visits anyway. More on that, in an upcoming post. In this recent visit, we talked about almost everything. One of the topics included issues that our kids are currently dealing with.
Our youngest shared with my wife that she does not know how to be herself. This is age appropriate, and she is just starting to experience social anxieties and the transition from simple childhood to the more complex social issues that now start earlier than ever. A few nights after the visit, I was able to have a brief phone conversation about this with my daughter. It was a sweet talk where I mostly reassured her that she is awesome and that I loved her. We talked about what it means to “be yourself”. I did my absolute best to explain this concept to an 8-year-old while knowing that this is still hard for me to do at 46.
The conversation left me thinking about simple yet how difficult this truly is. I think “being myself” is literally just showing the world who and exactly what I am without working or manipulating to show a particular image I think is right. In most cases, this concept means I do less rather than more. I think this includes speaking with honesty, being honest about how I feel about things and maybe most importantly being honest with myself. Despite the simplicity of this, I find myself veering off course regularly. I may tell you what you want to hear, I may laugh at a joke I don’t like or I may say or do something because it makes me look a certain way. Why do I do this from time to time? I think the answer is as simple as the concept, I am scared.
Fear is the driver of me trying to be something I am not. The fear that I will not be loved, liked or accepted. The 12&12 tells me that self-centered fear is the chief activator of all my character defects. Not being myself, literally changing my “self” to try and get a specific outcome from someone or something must be the definition of this. The fear I feel is intense at times, telling me that I am not good enough and that I must act fast to cover this up or change into something else. My experience has been, when I take action to try and be something other than what I truly am, I end up unhappy or worse.
When I was newly sober, I was on my way to my first date with the woman who would become my wife. This was my first real attempt to date without drugs and alcohol. I was extremely nervous. On the way, I was talking through the fear and anxiety with my sponsor. He said…”Relax and be yourself”. I immediately asked…”Do you think that will work?” To that he said…”I don’t know but that’s all you have”.
That conversation has stayed with me the last 17 years. That is all I still have. Any straying from this has led to pain and suffering. Prison has brought this concept front and center yet again. There are many subgroups in here with different traits and values. The constant internal pull is to be a chameleon and just be who I need to be from one moment to the next. The problem with this is that its exhausting and takes away any opportunity to have any meaningful connection. If I do this, it seems to lead to loneliness and despair. I am working on just being me, and letting the chips fall where they may.
My heart breaks for my daughter who is just entering this tough dance with fear and self for the first time. My hope is that she will magically rise above it and live a happy and pain free life. I know, however, that that is impossible and that she will have to learn this concept through pain like the rest of us. It has taken me 46 years to get ok with myself some of the time. I wish my daughter could see herself like I do, which is perfectly imperfect and totally enough. I wish that for us all. The world beats us all up enough, we don’t need to do it to ourselves.
