Ego

The WORST

I was listening to a woman I admire and she said something that landed so hard I have to share it. She said that she can’t say she had “low self-esteem,” because she had “no self-esteem.” And that part I’d heard before and nodded along with, but then she went on to remind me that thinking so poorly of ourselves is another form of self-centeredness. And that knocked me on my ass.

Because it is selfish, and self-centered, to think that you are THE WORST. And when you’re a recovering perfectionist, your knee jerk reaction to anything less than perfect is to declare it the WORST.

But I’m not the worst, I’m not even like medium worst, I’m accidentally terrible from time to time, but I’m learning to accept that as part of the human condition. And just aim for okay.

When I can reframe my self-loathing as self indulgence and remind myself that those feelings aren’t facts, I feel like I can skip the train. I can let it go by without climbing onboard.

So if you start to feel like you’re the worst… remember you’re not. I’m not going to say “we’re great and you’re perfect,” because… maybe we’re not but we don’t have to be. And if rah-rah- sis-boom-bah recovery isn’t for you, I hear that.

Because somedays I don’t want to hear that I’m a ray of sunshine and a child of the multiverse, because sometimes I’m a storm cloud throwing a tantrum. But here’s a thing that helps me when my monster starts to tell me I’m the worst.

I used to try to tell my monster to shut up. For years I listened to her and handed over control, and then I locked her in a cage and told her to shut up. But she’s been talking to me for years, whispering, screaming, and now I’m trying something new.

Instead of locking her up inside me, I go down and let her out. We sit and talk.

“You’re the WORST.” “I’m the– oh hey. I’m not the WORST, who’s the WORST?”

And we think of someone who might qualify. Someone who kicks dogs and splashes pedestrians and doesn’t tip. And I come up with things and she comes up with things and it’s fun to start to think about the worst person ever and right before it gets way too dark (or sometimes right after), we dissolve into giggles and I invite her up.

She isn’t ready to leave, but we can settle back in having determined that we are not, in fact, THE WORST.

Maybe we’re okay. And isn’t okay the goal?

I always thought I wanted to be superhuman. To do all the things. But now I’m going to try just being human. In all the things.