Schooled

I hate the feeling of having been put in my place, even though I always know--even while it's happening--that it's a good thing.

Perhaps I'm just over analytical... Certainly I spend far too much time thinking about Lea and not enough about other people. But I hate having to leave my place of protective levity and come to a place of actual self-reflection because someone told me something about myself that I wasn't seeing.

Hold on, I have to clarify that a little. I'm not opposed to self-reflection. I know I need it. I definitely want to know who I am, more. I just hate knowing that this person that everyone sees sometimes isn't the person I wanted to have them see. And it's not because I'm trying to be fake, certainly. It's because I know the person I want them to see is the real thing, and I know who they saw was not necessarily it.

The thing is, I don't ever want to take myself too seriously. It has become apparent that there's a fine line between that and being someone I truly don't want to be. For the last five years, it has been a matter of self-protection: I was so very, very vulnerable to the people around me if I ever let a bit of who Lea really is be out there for everyone to see. And those people were not the type to have others' best interests at heart.

But clearly, part of what happened was that I conditioned myself to cloak my thoughts and feelings in sort of aggressive humor--whether it was cutting or self-deprecating really didn't matter. Because it was easier to be laughed at for a joke, good or bad, than to be laughed at for anything that really mattered.

Now is the time for some reconditioning. So here, hopefully, is a start:

I don't ever need you to tell me that I'm smart or pretty or funny or helpful, because in my head I know these things to be true. And even if I sometimes have the awful feeling that I don't have anything of value to offer, I don't need to hear otherwise, because it's just a moment, and I'll be all right soon, and, anyway, it's not what I have, but what you need that matters. Besides, I don't aspire--not in any real sense--to be smart or pretty or funny, though it would be nice.

I only want to be unafraid.