August 14, 2008

Connections

I had intended today to post a synopsis of a really interesting discussion I’ve been involved in on a UU Theology mailing list about the historicity of Jesus. I still may do that, but there is something more pressing I want to try to write about even though the attempt will be something of a challenge for me.

It’s about me. And it’s about my relationship to you, whoever you are, and it’s about what is happening here, on this blog, and out there, in our lives.

I read a quote yesterday that said something to the effect of “low self-esteem, also known as ambition” and it caused me to sit and stare at the page for a couple of minutes. I’ve always been an ambitious person and I’ve never considered myself to be somebody with low self-esteem. And yet, there was something in that sentence that hit me like a ton of bricks. What is ambition if not the desire to impress upon the people around you that you’re worth a damn? Recently it has become to be clear to me that a lot of my problems in my life, historically, have stemmed from a low opinion of myself, or, more accurately, a firmly held belief that others have a low opinion of me.

I’ve never felt I was worthless, uninteresting, or any of that, but I have long had the feeling that others felt that way about me. This, my wife is fond of reminding me, is completely false. People genuinely care about me, some respect me, some even look up to me, and I know this intellectually, but on some emotional level I still feel like the kid who gets picked last for the team, the guy that people tolerate more than they accept and I have felt that way for nearly my entire life.

Among my early childhood memories is a time when my brother Reed as a toddler was upset over not being allowed to join in to an activity the “big kids” were partaking in. I asked my mom why Reed was crying and she said it was because he felt “left out” of what was going on. A day or two later I was playing in my room and suddenly became aware of the fact that nobody else was in there with me. I went out to see where everybody was and found the whole family, mom, dad, Rhett and Reed, in the living room. They weren’t doing anything in particular, but I started sobbing uncontrollably. My mom asked me what was wrong and I said, “I feel left out”.

When I told this to my therapist I said, “I have no idea why I suddenly started crying then” and he said, “it’s because it’s how you already felt and your mom just gave you a name for it”. And he was right. He was absolutely right.

Now, I’m not writing this because I want to gain any sympathy or to have a pity party for myself. The goal is quite different. I want to acknowledge this situation, this emotional state, this component of my life, and look at where it’s gotten me and how I can approach things differently.

I’m aware that I cannot simply re-write my childhood. I can’t erase the fact that I always felt like an outcast in my own family, like the black sheep. I can’t erase the fact that I currently am an outcast, making a reality what I’ve always felt. I can’t erase being picked on and laughed at and made fun of in middle school for being a “nerd” (a word that used to be intensely painful for me) and I can’t change the fact that I went from being a little kid who was so emotionally sensitive that he cried his eyes out for days after watching “Puff the Magic Dragon” to being a teenager who was often compared to a Vulcan for being so dispassionate and logical.

What I can do is be realistic about it. See how it shapes my actions in my life today. See how those feelings shape my reactions to situations. What does that look like?

God this is hard to write about. I have started this paragraph a dozen times and erased them all. What does that look like? One of the difficulties here is figuring out how to write about this topic without it either seeming as if I’m whining or seeming as if I’m being ridiculously hard on myself.

OK. So, I think maybe a good way to approach this is to talk about something that happened recently, my on-again-off-again upcoming musical performance at the Terminal Bar. I love playing live music. It is one of the most enjoyable things I ever do. To be on-stage singing is just a rush not unlike going on a roller coaster or having sex. It’s thrilling, although I’m the first person to admit that I don’t know exactly why. I just know I like the thrill of it. So, why is it that I so rarely perform? That gets into this whole disconnection thing. You see, music is something that I’ve always had, something that has always been a part of my life and the one area in which I have never had to fight for acceptance. I played with Rhett and he always loved and accepted what I did, always contributed to it himself and made it his own. I was never afraid to share my music with him, never worried that he would be disinterested or that he wouldn’t like it. When I lost that connection, that partner, I started casting around for other musicians to share my love of music with and I found that for the most part they were not easily found. Despite myself, despite knowing that this was how it would be until enough time and circumstance had passed that I would be able to meet new people, I was disheartened and the part of me that felt like an outcast, like a reject, piped up to tell me that the reason I wasn’t finding new people to play with was that people just weren’t interested in me. They just didn’t like me or they didn’t have the same interests, or whatever.

So I’d sit there, well aware that I needed patience and persistence and time to get involved here in this new world while having to battle this internal voice telling me, “people think you’re just a nerd, people just aren’t interested because they can’t see the real you, they’re not worth it, you should just give up the effort and go it alone”. That is how it usually winds up. I work for something, I put myself out there, then when I don’t get the immediate reaction of acceptance that I’m looking for, the reaction I used to get from Rhett, I find myself wanting to cut my losses and get out of Dodge. I decide, far too quickly, that people aren’t worth risking the crappy feeling I get. I agreed to play this gig, I wanted to play it, and I tried to string together a band to play it but I was trying too hard. It didn’t just happen naturally, I was forcing it. When things didn’t work, I took it personally, felt that I couldn’t rely on other people, that I should just go it alone. It’s a common pattern in my life.

It’s also one I have to learn to change. I must. My wife was kind enough to point out to me that my hypersensitivity to not feeling “included” leads me to cut other people off, to do precisely what I am always so afraid of people doing to me. If I don’t get the immediate love and acceptance I am looking for from people then I reject whatever they are offering instead of taking the time to adjust and follow things. If I want people to care about my life, I need to get involved in their lives. This is so painfully obvious that it’s hard to believe it had to be pointed out to me, but I learned to form social connections in a closed system, a world in which everybody you met was already your “brother” or “sister”. My parents didn’t really ever treat me with the love and acceptance I needed, so I got it from my brother and from within the congregation, places where I could take it for granted, where I didn’t have to work much or give much of myself. Those old rules, however, don’t apply any more. My brother is dead and my religion is too. I have to adapt if I ever want to truly connect with the new people in my life. And I can’t make that adaptation until I can understand why I cut people off, why I keep myself aloof and why I respond in such a hypersensitive manner when they fail to read my mind.

It may be that I’ve always felt like a black sheep. It may be that I’ve always assumed that others aren’t particularly interested in the geek boy with the guitar. It may be that there has never in my life been a time when I have been more sensitive, more unsure of myself and more of an actual outcast than I have been since that fateful day 4 years ago when I lost my faith. But learning to be patient, to accept people for who they are, to give them a realistic chance of accepting me (and not blaming them or myself if they don’t), this is something I can and will learn to do. I have a choice. I don’t have to be a flake or a drama queen or feel all this pain and anguish always feeling “left out” of everything, desperately hoping somebody will pick me for their team. I can learn to join the human race, to have a thicker skin, and to be patient. I need to.

Viewing 6 Comments

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    Hmm...how to respond to this without sounding like I'm just trying to make you feel better...

    Nope...nothing's coming to me...

    ...Still nothing...

    ...Oh, wait:
    It's funny, you know, how we (meaning all humans) simultaneously applaud and disdain differences. This occurred to me one day when, while having dinner as a teenager, my sister and I made fun of my mom for not adding sauce to her spaghetti (she just put some butter on it). Later that night, at the meeting, someone gave a talk wherein they said it will "sure be nice in the new system when everyone's the same", and I balked at his phraseology. But then I realized: hey, why was it "bad" for my mom to prefer a different style of spaghetti, and also "bad" when someone insinuated we'd all be the same one day.

    Where was I going with this? Oh yes, I would agree that you qualify as "different", but you are also the same person who taught me that that was a good thing. When I look back on our youth, I am hard-pressed to provide the name of a peer who we could consider "normal"; the benchmark that determined everyone else's weirdness depending on how far they deviated from him/her. When I mention people like Rhett, Chad A., Ryan A., Bobby, Tim G., Reed, Chad L. and you and me (to name a few we both knew), I think a case can be made for each one of them that they were a typical, normal teen. Likewise, I could present evidence as to why they were among the biggest oddballs I ever knew.

    Your difference, your feeling "left out", possibly also stems from your being a visionary; you always seemed to be the first one interested in something. You were the first of my friends to know about computers and you championed nerd-dom long before "geek-sheik" was coined. During the first few years when I got to know you, I got this idea that anything you were interested in was, by definition, cool. When you extolled the virtues of Hitchcock, Lennon and Mason Jennings (for example), I thought, "Well, those things must be cool if Ryan thinks they're cool". I remember Chad A. once asked me to recite the lyrics to "American Pie" for some reason, and my response was: "Well, Ryan thinks that's a dumb song", as if I was embarrassed to be a fan of something that you had publicly lambasted. (God, I love the word "lambasted".) And one day, when you were talking about "Joe and the Volcano", I thought: "Hm, I saw that movie, and I didn't think it was anything special, but I must be wrong." And when my grandma told me my cousins were taking piano lessons, I said: "Do they write their own music and record their own albums?", because, to my 16 year old self, anything else would have been lame. In fact, I think it's safe to say no one has influenced me more as to what I've read, watched and listened to besides you (well, except my wife, parents and sister, but they all have the advantage of having lived with me for years).

    I'm probably totally off topic now. I don't even remember what the topic was. Man, it's great to be drunk at 10AM on a Friday.
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    A stat that has been seriously helpful to me is that 1 out of 4 people won't like you. That's it. Nothing you can do about it. For whatever reason, they won't get you and if you really think about it, rather than get caught up in wondering why they dislike you, you'd see that in all probability you wouldn't have liked them either. That's very freeing, in my opinion. It takes the responsibility off of you. I have no idea if this stat is reliable but it seems very likely to be true.

    Being in therapy at the same time has been so helpful because it's made us realize how remarkably similar our issues are and leads me to assume that those issues are probably similar to many others. It's funny because people tend to be egocentric, never realizing how much alike they are. It's comforting to realize everyone shares most of these problems. I'm just so glad that you're choosing to explore them. It's a brave thing to do.
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    Interesting stuff. I've been thinking about a lot of the same things, as far as my own life goes.

    I picked up a Dr Phil (yeah, yeah) book at the thrift store and I'm a little over a hundred pages in and it's been really amazing. It's called Self Matters. In it, he talks about how we usually have a handful of defining moments in our lives that permanently change our perspective and our response to certain situations throughout our life, often to our detriment.

    It got me thinking and I've already had a couple of really valuable insights about how I feel about my family, about creativity, about how I view myself, etc.

    Anyway, thanks for posting this. I think it helps everyone when were open about these kinds of feelings.
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    I have to agree with James when I say that since I met you in high school your thoughts and opinions have held great value for me. Of course, I've always been drawn toward intelligent artsy folks. Whenever I make time for my creative pursuits it's usually because I've been inspired by what you are doing.

    And I agree with Es that almost everyone shares this feeling. It is comforting to know that you are never alone.

    I look forward, as always, to your next blog. You always make me think. You always make me take a much needed look into my own heart and mind.
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    I'd like to say thanks to all of you who left comments on this post. I don't really feel totally comfortable saying much more than that, I mean, who wants to be one of those "they like me! they really like me!" people? But, I really appreciate the fact that I'm not alone and I have true genuine friends. When I get irrational about my connections to other people, it truly helps me put those negative emotions into their proper place as confused relics from my subconscious, not present realities.

    So, again, thanks.
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    I am a little behind on all of my blog reading...so I just read this one. I wanted to thank you for your open, honest post.

    "What is ambition if not the desire to impress upon the people around you that you’re worth a damn?...on some emotional level I still feel like the kid who gets picked last for the team, the guy that people tolerate more than they accept and I have felt that way for nearly my entire life." I loved both of these thoughts. Very well put. I feel exactly the same way. I am in awe that you feel this way. You always seem so confident to me.

    "If I want people to care about my life, I need to get involved in their lives." That reminds me of something my mom always used to say to me, "If you want to have a friend, you have to be a friend." And, even though there is a lot of truth to that statement...I always hated it when she would say that. I hated it because I've struggled with depression and low self-esteem for as long as I can remember, and being the friend is so hard when you lack the confidence. (The only time it wasn't AS hard, was when I was medicated...but that's a whole different subject.)

    Really, I just wanted to say that I totally understand where you are coming from...I hope I can apply some of your good advice here.

    And, really (honestly) you are your own worst critic. Your friends really do care for you and look up to you. (me included, even if I'm only an acquaintance) You've got to tell your inner demons to shut up and believe the truth all around you. (I know that helps me.)
 
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